


Supernatural: Welcome to the End Times

by ThePowerBabe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Powers (Supernatural), Angel Wings, Cannonverse, Dean Winchester is Bad at Feelings, Dean will get his head out of his ass, Demons, Destiel - Freeform, F/M, Gen, God is not nice, Grieving Dean Winchester, I have to get the prayer in there, I love Destiel, Jack is dead but not really, Leviathans, M/M, Mean Dean Winchester, OC's - Freeform, Old Gods, Other, Season 15 dammit, Sympathetic Sam Winchester, Vampires, Werewolf, bring them boys back, eventually, older things than time, there are things older than god
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:47:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22781248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePowerBabe/pseuds/ThePowerBabe
Summary: Sam, Dean, and Castiel have to deal with the End of Time. They are going up against God (Chuck) himself. The boys don't know what is next, and anything is possible. They struggle with loss and redemption, winning and losing battles, and the ever-evolving door of The End Times. And only God knows how the stakes are going to play out. He holds all the cards after all. He is God! He knows all! Or so he thinks! he will find he has less of a hold on his creation than he thought he did and will discover that it was all his fault.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14





	1. The First Night of the End of Days

**Author's Note:**

> Destiel rewrite of Season 15 so far! I don't care if you don't like it! *sticks tongue out* I am writing this because I have an awful feeling I am going to hate the way it is really going to end. And I cannot deal. So I will hide behind this while cringing at what really happens. Forgive me, I am weak.

All of this, from the beginning, had been because He wrote it to be so. If this is to be taken literally. Castiel was always meant to meet the Winchesters. He was ordained to fall. He was always meant to double-cross them. To fail. Over and over. Lose. Die. 

He, Sam and Dean hardly got out of that mess of walking dead. The animated corpses are relentless in their pursuit. Castiel forced to use the little bit of power he had to knock back the tide enough to allow Dean and Sam a chance to run and find a vantage point for themselves. But in an open cemetery where the only thing big enough to hide behind is an old crumbling headstone, the chances of defense and high ground were slimmer than the body under the dirt in which the headstone perched coming up from its grave to kill them. 

Castiel, in his battle to give the Winchesters a fighting chance, had seen them gain some ground and he felt a moment of relief before he turned toward where Jack lay and noticed that the undead had overcome the body. Trampling him. He may have been nothing more than a pile of dirt for all the notice they gave him. Castiel groaned in pain. Not physical pain, but the pain of loss as he ran at the horde and smote them with angelic fire. He could feel himself weakening. He could not keep doing this.

"Cass!" Sam yelled over his shoulder as he ran toward a crumbling mausoleum. He didn't need to keep using his power, just enough to grab Jack's body. He gave one more almighty push of his power, ten or so zombie-like creatures toppled backward in a single movement as Castiel closed in on them and he reached down to grab Jack's limp arm. 

He looked as if most of his bones had been broken by being trodden on. Just seeing the young man, so beautiful and tragic and short in life and experience and it caused him so much pain that as he looked up at the living dead he had knocked over, starting to scramble to their fettered feet again, he felt rage well up in him such as he hadn't felt in a millennia. 

The angel breathed heavily as he tossed Jack's lifeless body over his shoulder and despite his power being almost extinguished, he summoned up all he could and felt almost like his own self when he commanded armies in heaven. From behind him, Sam and Dean both witnessed the shadow of Jack's wings, drooping down to the ground and Castiel, as he screamed out, a firewall of blue-white light fanned out like a molted whip and seared the bodies in half, as well as the tombstones and trees in the vicinity. 

The rage calmed before he realized his knees were starting to buckle under him. He turned, almost falling with Jack on his shoulder, and stumbled toward the Winchester brothers. Sam came forward and grabbed Castiel’s arm to help him over the threshold as Dean kicked the door in after several blows. 

Castiel stumbled over the doorway and into the cool dark of the mausoleum and gently, very gently, placed Jack down on the floor and knelt beside him, staring down at the body of the boy he cared for deeply. He can hear Sam and Dean asking what happened and where they were in the rush of their adrenaline. They ran around inside the crypt-like bugs in a bottle trying to secure it against the inevitable.

He can hear the Winchesters yelling and complaining about everything that happened over the last hour or so. God killed Jack. The day became a night of the living dead. The dead raised from the grave. God had been shot by Sam. What was the point, ultimately? Is this God finally getting tired of being made to answer for everything he did or didn’t do? Or… is this another step in his plans? Something he had also written, foreseen and knew would happen and has planned accordingly? 

Castiel looked up, wishing to catch the eye of either one of the brothers, at that point, it didn’t matter which. He had to know if they… if…they hated him. If they even cared if he was there. Castiel recognized that they were in too much trouble to even consider that sort of thing, although Sam yelling for him ought to have been confirmation enough that at least Sam didn’t want anything to happen to him. But Dean hasn’t spoken directly to him without yelling at him. 

Castiel had gone a long time without the care of wondering if others accepted him or not. His old self would not have cared one bit. He would have even told them that he had his reasons, with no emotion and left it at that. Now… he needed their assurance. He needed to know they still cared. But they were too preoccupied with the current situation and Castiel berated himself for his childish need. Castiel could no longer look at them. His eyes moved down to the boy at his knees. It was too painful to not have Dean look at him. 

Castiel wished, at that moment, that he had never learned how to love. How to feel. The pain in his heart is too great and he wanted it to stop. He would almost beg the Empty to take him now. Over the years, Castiel had learned what family meant. And as he looked down at Jack and caressed the side of his face, the blisters of his burned-out eyes rough against Castiel’s fingers, did he completely understand the weight of everything that had happened. 

Sam and Dean were having an emotion-driven argument about what God was going to do. About how he was going to end them. And how they can best defend and save as many people as possible. Castiel personally didn’t think it mattered anymore. Everything he had tried so hard to keep together even though it cracked relentlessly in his hands, had crumbled so that the only two pieces left in his hands were Dean and Sam. 

Over the years, all the humans he has gotten to know and like, respect and befriend had all fallen by the wayside except the Winchesters. Bobby has fallen. Ellen and Jo have fallen. Kevin has fallen. Charlie has fallen. Mary has fallen. Castiel’s eyes shifted down to where Jack’s hand rested on his chest above where his still heart lay. The epicenter of his soul. But not now. Not anymore. Jack… has fallen. 

The pain, so great, he felt… tears. Tears that had gone unshed for so long spilled over the rim of his eyes as he sobbed. One of them dropped on Jack’s cheek as Sam and Dean continued to argue.

“I don’t care, Sam! We have to go up against Chuck! I don’t care if I die! But I am NOT going down because I am running and hiding!” Castiel heard something break. Dean obviously threw something in his anger. Whatever broke, it shattered and a piece of whatever it was hit Castiel’s face. It hurt. But he did not bother to see if blood had been drawn. He was just looking down at Jack.

Jack. His son. A piece of his family; who had only ever wanted to be good; who only ever wanted to prove his worth to the men who meant the most to him. Jack, in fear and disapproval of himself, accidentally destroyed a piece of his own family. Her body in ash. Then he tried to correct his mistake to make amends. 

Not realizing it was too late. He had no soul to feel that. Yet he knew he had done something irrevocable. That he had passed the point of no return when he feared retribution from the men he loved for doing an act that he felt they would agree to and approve of. 

“I’m not saying we hide! But we got to pull back and get every other hunter we can, Jodi, anyone we can grab! Rowena… they will all be in danger if we don’t come together!” Sam tried to reason, even though his voice was doubtful. 

All Chuck would have to do is think… and they would not exist anymore. If it is a battle he wanted to participate in, and winning was an option for him… why doesn’t he just kill them all and get it over with?   
Castiel closed his eyes against their bickering. Dean had made some sort of scathing remarks about not trusting anyone anymore. Castiel had heard that before from him. 

Too many times in fact. He loses faith until he finds something else he can grab onto and believe in. In Castiel’s heart… Dean has held on to him and then loses his faith in him so many times. Castiel wished he had stayed dead. He did not want to see that look in Dean’s eyes again. Disappointment is so much worse than outward anger. 

“What and get them all killed too? Everyone who helps us… stands for us or turns against their own to support us dies! Or have you not noticed that?’ Dean said and kicked an empty beer can that littered the floor. “I am done, Sam! I am DONE losing people! It's either me or everyone else!”

“What does that mean?” Sam asked incredulously. “You gonna go in, guns blazing, and if you drop, then you won’t sweat it because you won’t have to watch everyone else die?!” 

“Damn straight!” Dean snapped and for a moment the only sound was the thumping moans and growls of the dead outside the iron and wooden doors being held by a discarded chain. 

“That will not solve anything, Dean.’ Castiel said as he continued to look down at Jack. “You will feel that way until the time comes and then you will think about how everyone else would suffer without you and you will pull back. Hesitate. You try to hide that you’re as sentimental as you are. Your treatment of your brother is proof of that.” 

“I never tried to hide how I feel for my brother and the lengths to which I would go to help him!” Dean retorted and automatically felt a squirm in his belly. He had hidden what he has been willing to do to help his brother. And it nearly got them killed. 

“That’s not the point-” Castiel started but Dean pointed at him.

“It is! You seem to think I will drop the ball when everything is going south because I don’t want to be alone! Because I can’t do anything without my little brother! I’m not you!” Dean growled. “We all fuck up! Me, you and Sam! But when you do, someone pays for it with their life!” Dean’s eyes shifted down to Jack. He could tell the angel had been cut deeply by his words and took vicious pleasure in seeing Castiel lower his eyes in submission.

“Dean, we have all done stupid things that have gotten everyone else nearly killed!” Sam cut across him pointedly. “Cass did what he thought was right! He was just trying to protect us! Protect Jack!” 

“And where did that lead” Dean turned slowly, adjusting the iron pole in his hand. “It ended in Jack killing our mother! And it has ended up with Jack being killed!” Dean said bitterly as he turned his back on both his brother and Castiel. He hated the bitterness in which he said it. He was sorry in hindsight that he did not kill Jack himself. If he had killed Jack, then he would have also died and then he wouldn’t have to watch the end times unfold. 

Yet in the end, he could not pull the trigger on the boy. Dean knew it was really because, despite his major fuck up, he still loved Jack. No, he wimped out… got all sentimental, as Castiel put it, and had to watch Chuck kill him instead. Dean stood there and breathed heavily for a moment before he started thrashing everything that wasn’t Castiel, Jack and Sam with the iron pole in his hand, groaning and crying as stone crushed and flaked. 

“Dean…’ Sam said his name softly as Dean collapsed in the corner still facing away from them. He didn’t want to look at anyone. His brother’s reproachful eyes. Castiel’s eyes seeking forgiveness wrapped in grief and sorrow. Jack’s body, lifeless… just a thing now. Dean’s head lowered to the wall.

“Dean,” Sam said again, this time a little sharper. Dean didn’t want to look at him. The door was still banging. The moans of the damned still attempting to get in. They may as well all give up now. They won’t survive this. Not even Castiel. 

Those things would rip him apart before he got halfway out of the crypt. Better just to resign themselves to the inevitable. Sam can be as optimistic as he wants to be… right up until the moment his throat is ripped out again. Dean only knew now that he was not willing to see either Sam or Castiel become a late-night end of times snack for the zombies.

“Dean!” Sam said a little more forceful. Dean turned his head to see a light in the middle of the mausoleum. It was soft at first but growing brighter as they looked at it. It almost looked like the light from the rift in which they passed into the apocalypse world. But it wasn’t a line of gold fire… it was as if someone had flicked on a really powerful lightbulb without the glass and filament. 

Sam had thrown up his hands in front of his face before Dean could bring his hand up too. Was this the end? Were they looking into the tunnel of death? Dean’s eyes looked passed his fingers to Castiel, who neither blocked his eyes nor looked away from the light. His eyes, large and beautiful blue as they reflected the light.

“DEAN!” Sam yelled and Dean’s eyes snapped back to where Sam was, and he vanished.

“SAMMY!” Dean yelled, cold dread encasing his heart as he looked back toward Castiel again and he too vanished along with Jack. 

And Dean too vanished. The crypt going still and as quiet as the dead.


	2. All aboard the Crazy Train

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean, Cass, and Sam are transported back to The Bunker and they deal with their most immediate issue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah, I know Dean is mean. But I always have seen him as so abrasive when he is angry and/or grieving but really, they had gone through a lot in a short amount of time. He will come out of it like he always does!

Everything is so uncertain. The world is going to be a royal mess. People, probably many, will die. And if and when they do, it will be on a colossal, Armageddon type of way. Life as they knew it will never be the same. All the trifle little things that seemed so important at one time were no longer an option. 

One thing is absolutely certain though. They are all screwed. Spit-roasted by the biggest dick of all time! That is all life seemed to be up until this point, one big prep session of Chuck putting his finger in the figurative asshole of the world to stretch it out so he can fuck them all in the end. 

Dean opened his eyes, on his knees in the bunker. For a second he heard nothing but Sam breathing in front of him. He lowered his arms; in the same position, he was in before Scotty beamed them out of the crypt and back to the Enterprise. Dean inwardly laughed with incredulity at himself and his inner monologue. Was he going insane? 

“What… what just happened?” Sam asked softly as he looked around. They were in the library. He looked at his brother on his knees and then to Castiel, who was also on his knees about five feet away holding Jack. “Did… did you do that, Cass?” 

“You know better than that, Sam. I no longer have wings. I cannot fly or teleport.” Castiel said as he looked around like he was trying to see evidence of what it was. Sam looked back at Dean, who was still on his knees with both hands at his sides with a one-hundred-mile stare. 

“Dean… what was that? Do you know?” Sam asked, more to get Dean to snap out of it rather than thinking his brother may have known the answer. Dean blinked a few times and looked up at Sam for a second before standing to his feet and looking around.

“No clue… but whatever it was… it saved us.” Dean said. Sam kept looking at him. He swallowed nervously as he tried to bring his thoughts together. 

“Dean… that light. It… felt… familiar didn’t it?” Sam asked softly. Dean’s eyes went out of focus again as he thought about it. Yes, he wasn’t sure why… but as the light got brighter, he felt… safe in it. Like something had told him to hold on and not be afraid. It is a very distinct feeling of warmth and love. He could not have said how or why… or who it may have been.

“…Dean… I think… I think… it could have been… mom.” Sam added. Dean shook his head.

“I didn’t feel anything. Anyways… mom is dead.” Dean said finally. 

“Human spirits can’t do that, Sam. That… it was something else. But I felt it too.” Castiel said. “The energy was much stronger than that of a human. I… I felt it… was trying to tell us something though I could not hear it. If I was at full strength, I may have been able to.” 

“Just more unanswered questions… great! So, some light beams us back to the Mother Ship! And We have no idea what the hell is going on!” Dean snapped. 

“Except that it seems to be the end of times. Again.” Castiel said as he looked back down at Jack. 

“Well then, we have work to do, Sammy… No time like the present to start!” Dean barked as he started to walk toward Castiel and Jack. Somehow the sight of Castiel leaning over Jack like that infuriated him. 

“Dean we really should-” Sam tried to slow his brother down but gasped when he saw Dean grab Jack. Dean reached down and roughly grabbed the lifeless arm and yanked him away from Castiel. Castiel tried to hang on to Jack but lost his grip. 

“Dean-no!” Castiel and Sam started to protest the treatment of Jack’s corpse. Castiel, not wanting the boy taken from him, tried to cling to him. But Dean pulled hard and Castiel was forced to relinquish his hold. Although that did not stop him from pursuing Jack that was now cradled in Dean’s arms. Fearing what Dean may do to him. Castiel grabbed Jack’s other arm as if trying to anchor himself to the body to protect it.

He knew Dean was angry and could have killed Jack for what he did… but he also has seen how Dean had lowered the gun. Castiel believed in his heart that Dean would not have pulled the trigger on Jack, not because he was afraid of hurting himself. Castiel knew… that Dean could not do it because he still loved Jack. 

Jack is his son too. So why such roughness? Why so hostile now? Castiel thought that humans gave great care to the bodies of the ones they loved. Castiel tightened his grip on Jack’s arm and Dean pushed him away so that Castiel landed on his knees after he staggered.

“Back the hell off,” Dean muttered dangerously. He adjusted Jack in his arms.  
“Dean-” Sam said reproachfully. “What are you doing?”

“I’m giving him a Hunter’s Burial before we all get killed and no one gets the chance… what does it look like?” Dean said as he got a better grip on Jack’s limp body, holding it much more like he was cradling a child. 

“Then let me help you-” Castiel stood up and started toward Dean but stopped when Dean turned away from him.

“You wanna help? Stay the hell out of our way. It’s safer that way.” Dean said bitterly. 

Both Sam and Castiel gazed at Dean’s back as he carried Jack around the table. Sam’s eyes flicked in Castiel’s direction. Castiel looked stunned. His soft blue eyes, stricken with pain. Was following Dean as if he could not believe what he heard. Sam, honestly, couldn’t believe it either. 

Yes, Dean is angry… he has every right to be… but after everything that has happened, their mutual grief should be shared. Together. Dean doesn’t have to bear it alone. Nor should he force the others to stay away.

“…Dean… he’s my son too.” Castiel beseeched. His call was ignored. 

“Sammy… help me with the kid.” Dean said hoarsely. 

“I will yes… but-” Sam shot a look back at Castiel, who stood there with his hands dangling at his sides, his eyes wet with unshed tears as he stared at Dean’s back, at the muscles that were shaking. Not from the strain of holding Jack… limp or not, the boy was not heavy. “Cass…’ 

“What about him? I don’t care what he does. He makes no difference to me. He wants to watch me burn our boy, that’s up to him.” Dean snapped and could see that Sam was raising another argument and he shook his head and started for the spiral stairs. “I’m done, Sam… help me, or don’t,” Dean said and stomped his way up the stairs and struggled for a moment to get the door open. But when he did, he carried Jack through it and was gone.

For a moment there was no sound but the ticking of the old clock over the arch and the door swinging shut before Sam licked his lips and looked at Castiel.

“…are you okay, Cass?” He asked. He knew it was a stupid question, of course he isn’t okay. Sam stepped closer but as he did, Castiel grabbed the chair next to him and threw it across the room. Before the chair had contacted the wall of books, sending them toppling to the floor, He was already reaching for the lamp on the table. He threw that across to the other side the room, all the while groaning and screaming inarticulate syllables. 

The lamp crashed against the wall and he turned to throw another end table into a corner where the delicate potted plant smashed in a heap. Turning to seek something else out to relieve his frustration, he found himself against Sam’s chest. 

Sam had grabbed Castiel’s back by the jacket and a wrist to try to hold him from hurting someone or himself. Even in his limited powers, Castiel is very strong. Sam could have been pushed across the room and he can feel that in how hard he had to struggle to pull Castiel in. Once Castiel was against his chest, Sam had wrapped his arms around him almost like a bear hug.

“Cass… Cass… stop.” He spoke quickly and softly. It took a few moments of struggling to keep the angel from continuing to wreck the library, but eventually the muscles in his arms and back and shoulders quivered to a slack position. Boneless, Castiel leaned against Sam’s chest, weeping. 

“I told you, Sam… I told you long ago. The only one who screws things up more than you… is me.” Castiel’s words were thick. A large tear slid down his cheek and onto Sam’s shirt. It wasn’t until then, did Castiel feel Sam shaking. 

His entire body was trembling. His breath was coming out in harsh puffs that Castiel could feel moving his hair. Sam too is obviously suffering. Castiel brought his arms up around the taller man and held him.

“Don’t do this to yourself, Cass. It’s a deep wound but it will heal.” Sam said. And as he did, he felt a sting of pain in his shoulder. He winced. Castiel pulled back, suddenly remembering that Sam shot Chuck with the gun… the gun that inflicted the same damage on the shooter. Castiel felt annoyance with himself as he pulled back looking at the hole in Sam’s denim jacket. Bloodless but burned. Castiel’s eyes filled with remorse as he looked up at Sam’s face.

“You should have said something about your shoulder. I would not have… expended so much of my energy in the cemetery. But I may just… have enough to…” Castiel pulled Sam’s shirt to the side and placed his hand over the dry and charred bullet wound. 

Castiel had to really concentrate but he managed to bring a little angelic force up to try healing the wound but… it was too magical a wound for him to heal and Castiel lowered his hand, ashamed that he could not ease even the slightest pain.

“It’s okay, Cass. At least you tried-” 

“No, Sam! You aren’t understanding! I used all my strength in the cemetery. It was meant to be so so that I could not heal you after.” Castiel pushed away from Sam. Sam still held onto his arms, hard, but he was no longer being pinned and as they looked at one another, another one of those occasional tears splashed down Castiel’s devastated face. “God has written this story already. All this has happened because he wanted it to be so. All my failures… Disappointing you. Failing and losing Jack… making Dean hate me… again.” Castiel’s voice broke and he lowered his head. 

“… We are the exception to his rule, Cass. We always have been! If he wrote the apocalypse… we stopped it. His story can be changed! Chuck… cannot make me hate you. And Dean certainly doesn’t hate you.”

“Sam… listen to yourself. You know what you are saying is wrong. Dean is not as forgiving as you are. You saw his eyes when he looked at me. I am… dead to him.’ Castiel said pityingly. “God has ordained this too. So, all your winnings and failings, like mine, are already decided. Perhaps you changed his story… because he wrote it that way.” 

“So…what? Are you giving up too? Just giving up because you think Chuck has you doing his errands like a puppet on strings?” Sam asked, taken aback by this. He knew instinctively that Castiel was right. Still, he wasn’t going out without a fight! It isn’t who he is! It’s not what a Winchester does! “I don’t care what you and Dean say! I am not letting Chuck triumph over us! I will find a way to win this! But I can’t do it without you and my brother! I need you, Cass! Dean needs you too!” 

“… No. I will do my part, Sam. The only thing I can do right.” Castiel said and headed for the door. Dean may not want him near, but Castiel could no more ignore Jack’s funeral pyre than Dean or Sam. “I’m going to honor our boy. Because it’s all I can do.” 

He made his way outside where they usually burn the bodies of their fallen friends. Sam was behind him in a matter of time, but silent. They both had their own train of thought as they walked to help Dean with Jack’s fire. 

Sam wanted to comfort Castiel but knew the angel, like his brother, would not except it. Not because Castiel didn’t want to be comforted. But because he felt he didn’t deserve it. Dean, on the other hand, wanted no comfort because he would use the pain as a talisman. A means to an end. 

This war is intensely personal for all of them. Sam no less than the others. He loved his mother, yes… but he cannot even begin to describe why the loss of Jack is hurting him more.


	3. Uneternal Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Winchesters send Jack off to whatever garden variety spot The Empty has for him. Cass is fatalistic. Dean hides his feelings the only way he knows how.

Jack’s body lay in the grass outside the bunker. Dean was piling the wood as Sam and Castiel emerged from the bunker. Dean is sweating, his muscles working and tense as he moved relentlessly. His head kept coming up and looking around for anything that may be watching. Although the bunker is warded for all the usual suspects. With Chuck on a warpath now, the rules have changed. He may suddenly decide those squiggles mean nothing and that there is finally no way to stop anything from getting in the bunker. 

Sam came over and took off his overshirt to help Dean. It’s early morning. Four AM, given the dim light in the sky. Castiel, who teetered on the verge of helping several times, halted too because he was afraid that Dean would not let him help. 

Castiel decided, that he would step forward and help… If Dean tried to stop him, he would tell Dean where to go and how to get there. This isn’t about their issues right now; it is about Jack. So, when Castiel removed his trench coat and joined Sam and Dean in the building of the bonfire, neither Sam nor Dean responded to stop him. So Castiel helped. 

With three of them working on it, the pyre was built in no time. All three of them, wordlessly, picked Jack off the ground and placed his body in the center of the pyre. Each one of them with their own expression of grief. Sam, who showed how much he loved Jack, fought back his tears as he looked at the young and ruined face as he adjusted Jacks’ legs as if wanting him to be as comfortable as possible. 

Dean, who had Jack’s right arm, wore a blank face as he stared down at the dead body. Castiel knows this is how Dean deals with grief. He bottles it up. He shoves it way down inside and lets it be a charm. It fans the furnace of his determination. But in the depths of his green eyes, Castiel can see the hurt. The confusion. The betrayal. His lips moved with silent rebuke and sorrow that he seemed to feel important to keep to himself.

Castiel held Jack’s left arm and his head as they lowered him and Castiel then and only then could look away from Dean’s face. As Castiel lowered Jack’s head to the pyre, his fingers ran through his hair, ruffling it softly as he began to silently cry again. The feeling is torment. The feeling is bedlam. 

He wished he couldn’t. So many unsaid things and plans with the boy kept Castiel in place, wishing he could do it over and get it right and frustrated because he knew he couldn’t any more than Dean or Sam could. He can sense Dean’s anger… his grief. Sam’s grief. He cannot fathom how humans deal with this pain. 

“Since when do you cry?” Dean asked as he lay Jack’s arm down beside him. Castiel pulled his eyes away from Jack’s face and looked at Dean. He struggled to speak for a moment.

“I have been amongst humans. I have learned how to feel these things, Dean. You can’t be amongst a Winchester and not feel anything.” Castiel said softly and sadly as he gazed at Dean. He could tell Dean wanted to say something. It flickered in his eyes before it iced over again and he turned away.

“Well… good for you.” Castiel looked away from Dean and lowered his head as he held Jack’s hand. “I’m gonna soak him with gasoline. Unless you want to go up like a candelabra, I’d move…” 

Castiel gently rested Jack’s hand on his belly and deftly straightened out a haywire hair. Dean came over and started splashing Jack with the gas before Castiel could fully move. Dean really didn’t care that he was standing there, and this broke Castiel a little more on the inside. He got his arm out of the way just before he got the substance on him. The oil itself would not hurt him. But he would not be able to stand too close to the pyre as it burned. 

He kept his eyes on Dean the entire time. He could not stop looking at him. He wanted Dean to know… to feel just how remorseful he is, how much regret is in him. How thankful he is that Dean didn’t pull the trigger on Jack. It made no difference in the end. Jack… is dead.

And Castiel… to Dean Winchester… is dead. 

Dean backed away after tossing the gas can to the side and stood on the other side of Sam, away from Castiel. He pulled his trusty lighter out of his pocket and looked at it for a moment, recalling how he had allowed Jack to play with it once on their little trips on the road in Baby. Just he and the kid on a little one on one time. 

He recalled Jack asking to teach him how to flick the lighter with style as Dean does when they were sitting under the stars in front of a lake after an evening of fishing and watching the fireflies coast across the water leaving little green trails over the glassy surface.

“I have tried to use it before. I ended up burning myself with it. Can you show me how you do it?” Jack asked as he watched Dean play with the lighter. 

The memory of Jack’s eager expression snuck up on Dean all of a sudden as his eyes shot up to see the boy in the pyre, covered in gas and his eyes welled up in tears. An echo of Jack’s voice saying, ‘This is the best day ever!” as he was allowed to drive Dean’s precious car. An honor that not too many people have been given. 

Dean hesitated only for a second before he let autopilot take over and his wrist flicked the lighter in the flare that Jack appreciated, and he tossed it to the foot of the pile of wood. It went up quickly, consuming Jack in mere seconds. 

“Goodbye, Kid…” Dean muttered as his eyes brimmed. He turned his head away so that Sam could not see but he knew well that Sam was full-on weeping at that point. He could hear him sniffling and wiping his nose and eyes with his sleeve. 

He didn’t often see Sam break down like that. And he didn’t think he could now. He couldn’t handle it. He closed his eyes. He wasn’t going to walk away. Not until the fire died and there was nothing but ash. But then he heard it… He heard Castiel.

“I love you, Jack.” 

Dean bit his lip. He turned his head away again. He wasn’t sure if Castiel even meant him to hear it… he said it so softly, but it carried. And it was so heavy. Sam let out a shaky breath and muttered, his voice choked like Castiel had dumped the heavy anguish on him like a suffocating goop. 

“I love you too, Jack.” 

Dean gritted his teeth, inside his head, he was throwing a serious fit. He can feel his mind reeling with the destructive force of what he wished to do to anything and anyone who got in his way right now. He would extinguish them… he didn’t care who it was. His green eyes lifted, and they reflected the fire on its surface. A tear slid down his cheek as he refused now to remove his eyes from the fire, even though the smoke and heat stung them. 

It didn’t take too long for the fire to die down. And when there was clearly nothing but wood left, Sam had put his hand in consolation on Dean’s shoulder before he walked back into the bunker, subdued, hands deep in his pockets. Castiel, who lingered a little while longer also went by Dean. Dean had not moved the entire time. He stared at the fire as if he was a sentinel. 

Castiel slowed as he passed Dean. He brought his hand up as if he wished to touch Dean’s shoulder… his back. His arm. It didn’t matter… he needed, wanted that intimate connection with Dean again. He needed to hear Dean, let Dean pour out his grief on him. But he could not make his hand touch the man. Instinctively knowing that Dean would not allow it. 

Castiel had to satisfy the urge by looking tenderly at Dean’s profile for a few long seconds before he too turned away and walked back into the bunker after a swift and sad look at the dying fire. 

Dean wasn’t sure how long he stood there, not moving. The sun was full up now, there were birds singing in the distance. A soft wind blowing some of the ash from the fire in little swirls and eddies across the dirt. 

He felt Castiel behind him before the angel walked back into the bunker. He knew… or he suspected that the angel wanted to say something. He wanted to touch him. Do something to soothe him. But he didn’t and Dean was grateful for it. Dean knew at this time; he would have shrugged Cass off and… Dean would regret it.

Tears had long since dried on his face. It made lines through the dirt and sweat as he walked forward and stood so his boots were right on the very edge of the ashes and he knelt down. The ashes were still hot. He can feel the heat radiating off it. 

Yet he could not bear to move. He looked down at it. Then gently ran his fingers across the uppermost layer of it, feeling it fleck away from him and spill into itself. Fresh tears came out of his eyes as he made himself grab a handful of the burning ash, even though it blistered his palm, he held it to his chest and let his head hang. 

“I love you.” He moved his lips to form the words but no sound came out as he quietly wept for another hour, intermittently for his mother and for Jack, before he could go back into the bunker and fall on his bed fully clothed, where he passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maybe it makes me morbid that I wanted to see Jack have a hunter burial. I would prefer him not to be dead, but I wanted to see the daddies react to it!


	4. Somewhere between Empty and Nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billie tells The Empty what it stands to gain by giving up one of its tenents.

Void.

Dark.

Silent.

Empty. 

The Empty. A place of nothing. A place where the dead angels and demons go to sleep the rest of eternity away.

Once or twice in a known eternity has a being woken up in The Empty. And The Empty always gets so angry when they do. They are not supposed to have the ability to wake up. But recently the quiet has been disturbed quite a bit and it is getting agitated. The place is not The Empty if there are things walking around and making noise! Disrupting the natural order and driving The Empty insane.

"You will do as I say. We had an agreement. In order for you to exist... and sleep... everything else needs to exist." Billie said. The Empty tilted its head. Hating that self-assured and pushy way this new Death held the playing cards tightly. As if she knew there was no debate or argument 

The Empty could give that would even begin to change her mind. Yet, The Empty knew better. God or The Devil had no sway here. Eventually, at the end of time, they too... will come to the empty and sleep and endless nothing.

"I am the one who rules this place! The Empty and I are one and the same! God cannot usurp his will here! The Devil cannot destroy it! They are nothing here! They will just sleep in an endless inexistence! Peaceful. Quiet! Just the way I like it,' The Empty said in a manner that left no doubt it was unpleased. It quivered. It pinched its mouth together as if fighting back a snarl. "So why is it, recently, there have been angels and demons waking up and disturbing my rest? Why are they waking others? Why is there an outside influence on my domain?"

“There has always been outside influence. Reapers come here all the time,’ Billie said and raised her hands, shifting her weight to one foot, displaying herself… as she is obviously there. “It takes a Reaper to bring the Angels and Demons here. And unlike my old boss, I do like to throw curveballs once in a while. Even though I respected my old boss, he was too ‘by the books’ for me. Which is why I am standing here, and you are awake right now. I have a curveball for you.”

“I’ve had enough of those, thank you! And I liked your old boss. Your old boss left me alone. And he at least played by the rules. I am not sure I like you very much!” The Empty said with a quiver of its lips as it transformed into the spitting image of Death… the skeletal form of a withered man with slick back hair and austere expression. Billie did not look phased by it. In fact, she clicked her tongue and looked to a point just over The Empty’s shoulder as if she found the display boring. 

This, of course, did not sit well with The Empty. It came forward, right in her face. She neither flinched or took a step back. Which she found it probably wanted, judging by that haughty look on The Empty wearing her old boss’ visage. 

“You don’t have to like me,’ Billie added. “You just have to play your part. I get the impression you like your set up. You get the celestial beings that make you bigger… stronger. But if Earth… Heaven and Hell die… the Universe dies. I die. You die. And there will be Nothing.”

“If everything is dead, then we can all sleep and it will be quiet. So why would I have a problem with that?” The Empty said in a snarl as it’s face shifted from Death to Zacharia. From Zacharia to Ruby. From Ruby to Asmodeus. Then it fell back into a smudge of rippling inky energy.

“You like your sleep, you like your quiet. You like managing the beings that come here. I like my job too. I take souls where they need to go. You… will not take that away from me. I will not stand for that. So, if you like your arrangement here, then you will do as I say, to make sure it stays that way.” She said in a manner that told The Empty that she was unimpressed by its display of angels and demon’s reaped in the recent past. 

The Empty looked at her dubiously. Trying to understand the difference between nonexistence and what The Empty does. If The Empty is unaware of its position, then it knows it will never become larger and all-encompassing when all the angels and demons have died and become part of it. And if the Empty doesn’t exist. It will be replaced by the Nothing. And Nothing is far worse. The Empty raised its eyes, now resembling Lilith…then Gabriel… then Castiel…then… Crowley. 

“I don’t want The Nothing to take over. I have collected too much to want to give it up. My collection is too precious. What do you need?” The Empty asked and Billie smirked. The Empty smiled and started walking in a circle around Billie. Looking her up and down with the same face of Crowley, his gait, his devious smile, his burning blood-red eyes.

“Well… for starters… I want you to wake up Jack. The Nephilim.” She said, unfazed by this display. Negating imparting the information she also knew about The Empty and The Nothing that God has told her, himself. The costly price against everything should they be tampered with or vanish. 

“Ooooh no. Not the Nephilim. He is staying put.” The Empty said as it assumed the body of Lucifer. The devilish smile firmly in place. Billie raised her brows. Like most other entities, she steps back at the sight of Lucifer. It would do well even to stay clear of anything associated with the beast.

“Jack is the only one strong enough to stop the end times. Why do you think God killed him?” Billie asked. The Empty Lucifer made a complete circuit to her position and then closed in on her. Looking down her with that trembling snarl and glowing red eyes; rubies in solar flares, boring into her. The irony of this face looking down at her with faux rage and contempt was not lost on her. 

“Because he has a twisted sense of humor. He must like watching those Winchesters suffer. And that little…’ The Empty switched from Lucifer to Castiel again. “That little Winchester pet… the one who woke me up, to begin with! The one who challenged my power and forced me to throw him out before I lost my mind!” 

“Get over it. What you will do is wake Jack up. Because if you wake him up, he can save your pitiful existence. I know… My former boss knew you thrive on knowing that you rule this place. Let’s just say that if Jack follows my direction, he will be able to save the Winchesters and the rest of the world from destruction. And not just the world… not just earth. I mean everything. Keep this well-oiled machine chuggin’ the same way it has since God decided to let it fly solo.”

“And how is… this… Is Jack able to do that? He is just a Nephilim.” The Empty asked as he tapped at his head. “It can’t be simply because he is an Archangel’s spawn. Arguably the more powerful of the Archangel’s and certainly the most lunatic of them; but what is this boy compared to God?” 

“Let me put it this way then. God is really a writer. And by Jack’s own books of life, they all end the same way, God will die. And when he dies, everything he created will die with him. Unless he doesn’t die and is cast down, himself and replaced by someone equal to him or more powerful than him.” Billie said. Her tone low and excited. 

She can see fields of green, the sweet smell of flowers, the cold infinity of space, the crash of waters. All of it blinking out. Words will never have existed. 

When her human body actually existed in the mortal realm. She would never have read of the relevance of time and space. Einstein would never have been around to say, ‘We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for the few persons nearest us’. 

“In a nutshell, this entire thing is bigger than you. Bigger than me. Bigger than almost everything. Except… The Nothing. You think you know it all. There are things out there, bigger things, that you will never… ever understand.’ Billie grinned widely. “How we are all a small part of something bigger.”

“What exactly does that mean?” The Empty asked.

“God told Lucifer that he was ‘beautiful and perfect’ filling him with pride. And in his pride, with little help from the Mark of Caine, he said he would place himself over the Lord. And for his hubris, he was thrown out of heaven. Do you know why God couldn’t let someone assert power over him or his sister?” Billie asked as she smirked. The Empty looked at her without speaking and she took that as an affirmation to her suspicion. It didn’t know.

“God is holding all sorts of secrets. One of them… is how he came into being. How he and Amara came into existence. They would tell you that they had always ‘just been’. But that is not the truth. Beginnings are infinite… there is no telling, there is no measurement that can adequately be given to describe the number.”

“What do you want, Death? Jack? I heard that request. But I won’t give you anything until you speak straight with me. Jack can keep existence as it is and God himself will be, what, cast into a cage-like his son?’ There was no mistaking the amused skepticism in The Empty’s tone. “I will believe that when I see it. But if you are trying to tell me there are older things that Death. And The Darkness and The Light and The Empty…”


	5. Digging in the Dirt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some strange goings-on in Maine. A woman in a small town gets pulled through her bed into a pile of dirt. Literally. 
> 
> Sam and Dean head north to investigate. But before, an attempt to talk to Dean is made that doesn't go well.

Skowhegan Maine.

A small efficiency apartment in a low-income housing complex.

Vanessa lay on her bed after having been up for nearly four days. Unable to sleep from horrible dreams. Dreams of being sucked into the earth. Vines or tentacles, she really cannot tell which it is, come up under her feet and drag into the dirt and she cannot breathe. She tries to scream but no sound comes out. Worst of all, she cannot move. She cannot run. And it feels as if something big and angry is trying to get inside her.

Its like a pounding on a proverbial door in the distance. A giant door. A giant Door with no walls around it. A door set amongst a wasteland. The clouds above rage by as if the world was set to rotation at fifty-five miles an hour. Dark and roiling storm clouds that looked heavy enough to fall to the ground and smother everything. 

The ground before her slid into nonexistence. Off in the distance where it became a memory. The focal point was the door. The very big door with the echoing knock rolling like thunder over the preceding space to her ears. The door with a giant’s knuckles crashing to the barricade intent in keeping it out of the nightmare. 

This dream has come to Vanessa all her life. But she hasn’t thought of or had this dream in years. It was much more common and frightening when she was younger, and the miracles of the Internet didn’t answer some possibilities as to what the dream actually meant. 

Of course, all of that is just people talking out their asses. No one really knows. Explanations of the meaning of dreams are glib. The books and sites say that dreams are a byproduct of one’s self-consciousness. That dreams are our bodies weeding through the information in our brain while we sleep. Some think that specific things and images in dreams have a cosmic meaning. Tornadoes mean there is a change coming your way. Spiders mean good things too.

Both of which scare the shit out of Vanessa. She cannot fathom what the hell being trapped in a room, forced into stasis by webs connected to her neck, wrists, and ankles keeping her in place has to do with anything positive in her waking life. If she moves, the giant spiders in every corner of the room would wiggle and bounce there way closer to her. 

So, if she didn’t want those monsters near her, she was forced to be as still as possible. And being terrified of spiders didn’t exactly calm her nerves at all. 

Even if she wasn’t that afraid of the spiders, she still wouldn’t want them near her. And she would be tired or uncomfortable. So, it forced her to move and here they come, bobbing up and down on the thick strings of web as their bulbous bodies bore down on them. 

Or the regular nightmares of being trapped by giant black and dust-colored tornadoes boxing her in. Bringing the sky down on her. Nowhere to run. Stifling. Choking. How do these things sound like the promise of anything good? Tornadoes are supposed to denote change… but that is very subject. Change can be bad as well as good.   
And given the state of fear Vanessa is in, those tornadoes surrounding her like a crowd of protesters with an issue in her very existence didn’t feel the least bit good or positive. 

So, Vanessa has done a lot of dream meaning research. However, she doesn’t feel that any of their explanations on what tornadoes or spiders mean. What she recognizes is the things and places she is. They only send two messages, regardless of the state she is in. 

Trapped by spiders. Trapped by tornadoes. Obviously, she feels trapped. Figuratively, in real life. She dreams of her literal fear embodied in the state of being she stands in when awake. 

And the point of the dreams is either to terrorize her or her spirit. Or something outside of her, like God, or one of his angels (she really doesn’t believe she is worthy of the attention of the big man upstairs ‘personally’, so probably one of his angels,) calling out to her to wake her up and guide her out of the mess she is in outside the dreamscape. 

This can be taken, in literal terms, that Vanessa is feeling trapped in her life and she needs and wants to escape but something is bullying her into place. The Bully is her fear. Her fear is on ineptitude and failure. Self-doubt has killed her over and over. 

But the last two weeks has departed from that vein completely. For the last two weeks, every night, she would dream the same thing over and over! She would wake up from the dream, go back to sleep and dream it again until she wakes up in a cold sweat. 

On and on it goes. The dream of the floating wasteland door and the cosmos knocking on the other side. Every night, she gets closer to the door. The last time she dreamed it, she had her damned hand on the doorknob before she woke up! Either she is going to hang in this new hell or face the fear of what is knocking on the other side.

Vanessa was terrified to sleep now. She has stayed up for four days. Only nodding off for a couple of hours at a time but she had her phone set to wake her up. She figured that if she doesn’t get too far into REM sleep, the dream won’t trigger. And even though she will sleep it is never enough and she is feeling it. 

Hallucinating shadows out of the corner of her eyes. Eating a lot of food. An unnecessary amount that would usually make her sick. Gaudy amounts of coffee. She doesn’t bathe, afraid the water will make it worse. She never goes out. Because, you know, fresh air can make you tired too.

No, she spends most of her time writing or making digital paintings, blaring everything from ABBA to Zeppelin in her ears. And so far, she has maintained this path. Tonight, she was working on a picture of The Door she had been seeing. But she rushed over to write down her feelings about the door. 

However, as she sat in front of her computer to type, she felt the need for one of her two-hour naps. She got up and went to her bed, turning out all the lights in the apartment, sans the window with the Christmas lights on it. Yeah, it is an efficiency apartment. She can see her living room and kitchen from her bed. No, it’s not Christmas, but she doesn’t care.

She set her alarm and lay down on the bed, closed her eyes and fell instantly to sleep. The room was quiet except for the tick of the radiator or the fridge making that weird hum noise that most cheap ones do. Vanessa reached out her hand. It was slow as if her hand and arm were a tree slowly growing out of the landscape of her curves to the bed. Her hand fell on the doorknob. Her fingers closed around it.   
Vanessa choked and her head thrashed to the side. 

“Gon Untal Gonmedvan.” A voice so loud it sent resonating vibrations through her body like the deepest base. So low and tremulous that you feel it more than you hear it. It was too much for her to handle. Her hand released the door and her hands clapped over her ears as she screamed. It didn’t matter in the end. 

The door opened and when it did, Vanessa was so moved and utterly stunned by what she saw that any capability she had at vocalizing her disbelief that her body went into shock. It was like her body has told her that all of her life and existence, has only ever been a tiny blip in the universe. 

A speck of free-floating dust with little to no meaning but to serve as an annoyance to the thing on the other side of the door. And because her body, being the organism, it is, resigned itself to its inevitable end because it no longer saw any meaning in its cosseted timespan. 

Her mind imploded and her eyes burned out before she could fully examine it. Something long and thin and strong wrapped around her middle. It was really squeezing. She couldn’t draw breath anymore. Her lungs no more than a thing. 

Nothing different from a deflated basketball in a gutter. Then she felt herself sinking. Sinking into the dirt. She tried to open her nonexistent lips and teeth and tried to scream again, and nothing came out. Not even the feeble hiss of air. 

Vanessa thought she was dreaming. But she wouldn’t wake up from this one even though her phone alarm beeped and went into snooze three times before the battery died. Vanessa was no longer in her low-income efficiency apartment in a low-income neighborhood in Skowhegan Maine. She would not be seen again until later. By the people who knew her as a quiet, introverted single woman down on her luck. And her name is Vanessa. 

Vanessa doesn’t even know she is Vanessa anymore. She doesn’t think about the apartment or the job she just got, or her niece and sister. Or her best friend. Or food or coffee. All of those things just drifted into limbo. No, she is no longer on that plane. Something much larger and more eternal had her and she was that thing. She can feel the world spinning. She can feel the sun warming the water and earth on the other side of the planet. She can feel Australia in pain. And the rush of the water as it cascades over a waterfall.   
This is not the reality she knew before. 

A couple of days later, Vanessa’s landlord came to her door with a master key that opens every door in the building. He took a cop with him because, well… if there is a body in there, he needed one, right? And there should be no reason why the Landlord could not get a hold of her. She was usually pretty good at getting back to him on things, despite being an introvert. 

Her car is in the lot. Her phone is off or missing. And she usually opens her shades and puts her plants in the window, but for a few days, she has had them closed. And the mail in her mailbox was getting ridiculous. 

“Vanessa?” The Landlord called as he opened the breezeway door. No answer. 

“Vanessa. It’s Mark.” He said as he knocked on the inner door. Still, no answer. 

He cracked open the door to the apartment and looked in. Nothing looked out of place until he opened the door all the way and seen the bed. He thought, foolishly, that she dumped a potted plant on the bed. A big potted plant at that. Her phone lay on the dresser next to the bed. He looked in the bathroom and the lights were off. He walked over to the bed, sweeping his head from side to side looking for anything more unusual than topsoil all over the tenant’s comforter. 

He stopped and looked down at the dirt and put his fingers in it. It sort of sunk down in the middle. The dirt was loose. He pushed into the dirt to see if he can feel the springs or something under his palm, but the dirt just sunk in further. He brushed the dirt and went down quite away and… where the hell is the blanket under all that dirt? He pulled away and hit the couch behind him. A notion hit him.

What if… the foundation, floor, and bed opened and swallowed her whole? That’s ridiculous. His eyes shifted down to the floor along with the bed skirt that was ruffled near the floor and there was soil there too. But not like it had been dropped right there. 

It was like it slid out from under the bed. He got down on his knees and picked up the bed skirt to look under the bed. And under it, pressed between the supposed floor and box spring was nothing but dirt.   
Mark stood up quickly, brushing at his palms and knees as he breathed shakily and stumbled out of the apartment.

He went to the cop waiting outside and explained what he saw. The cop went in and seen the things that the Landlord described and filed the report. Of course, hunters in Maine were able to hear the CB transmission and they called the only Hunters they felt were able to take care of this sort of thing. They call the Winchesters. 

1,839 miles of hopping phone towers, Sam’s phone rings. Sam picks it up.

“Hey, Mitchel, what’s up?”

“I tell yeah, Sam this is a weird one. We can use all the help you can give.”

Back at the Bunker in Lebanon Kansas, Sam was packing his duffle bag with his phone pressed between his jaw and shoulder as Mitchel gave him the lowdown of the strange happenings. Mentally filing the information in his head as he prepped to go. Dean came around the doorway from the kitchen with a cup of coffee in his hand.

“We are out of coffee,” Dean said grumpily as he approached Sam at the War Table, not realizing Sam was on the phone until he was standing next to him. He looked down at the prep work Sam was doing and then up to his brothers’ profile and the concentration on his face. 

Dean tapped Sam’s arm with his free hand and Sam paused in his repacking only long enough to hold a finger up at Dean, signaling him to wait. Dean pulled a face and walked around Sam to sit at the table to wait. But as soon as his ass hit the chair, Sam was pulling the phone away from his ear and hanging it up.

“I hope you didn’t want that last cup of coffee. Cuz I’m drinking it.” Sam looked at him for a second and considered a measured response before giving it up. Dean had that look on his face as if he was just itching for a fight. Sam was not going to give into it.

“I got us a case,” Sam said as he pushed his phone into his back pocket and Dean took a loud sip of the coffee. There was a clink of glass on glass as Dean put the cup down.

“More Night of the living Chuck? Or is it more like World War Chuck?” Dean asked. Sam, knowing the references smirked and shook his head.

“Neither. It doesn’t appear to be anything we have seen before. I mean, I guess Chuck could be involved but… I honestly don’t know why this would be him. Mitch called and said a woman was sucked through her bed, floor, foundation into the dirt. And the dirt was up in her apartment like it was sentient.”

“Oh good. Sentient dirt. That’s a new one.” 

“That’s why Mitch called us. Said it was right up our alley. I thought we could spin up there and take a look.” Sam said and as Dean stood to accompany him, Sam looked at him. “Have you seen Cass?” 

Dean had turned to head to his room to gather his things, but he paused. His shoulders were set and tense. It took him a few moments to answer. He looked over his shoulder.

“No’ Dean said and looked forward and took a few steps before he stopped and looked back at Sam. “And I really don’t care.”

“Dean… we need him,’ Sam started but Dean shook his head and turned away again.

“Maybe you do. I don’t.” Sam was looking at the back of his brothers’ head. His jaw clenching in aggravation. He can see why Dean is angry. Why his brother feels the need to keep his distance from Castiel. Even reject him outright. But Dean had to know this isn’t right. How he is treating Cass. The angel has been their friend for ten years. 

Sam, for one, is tired of Dean’s habit of letting anger ride shotgun in his soul. Dean allows himself the pitiful pickings of mourning and rage and that is. Its what he feeds off of. That is why ever sing wound, shallow and deep hurt equally as bad to him. 

It’s not easy to forgive a mistake that kills a family member. Their mother and Jack. But Cass’s decision was made out of love and concern for a family member. Around and around the argument can go. 

Because Cass could have just as easily protected the rest from Jack. Sam gets it. He does! But Sam also knows his brother well enough that his decision would not have been different than Cass’s. 

“Yes, you do. I need him too. He is our friend. Our brother, Dean! We don’t turn on or leave family!” Sam insisted as he stepped forward to grab Dean’s shoulder, spin him around so they look at one another. Dean jerked his shoulder out of Sam’s grasp.

“If I needed him here, it is only to kick his feathered ass from here to the farthest reaches of Hell.” Dean turned his back again and got to the doorway. “Besides… why can’t you call him? You have his number. Why do you have to ask ME?” 

“Why do you think I had to ask you?’ Sam asked incredulously. “Because he hasn’t answered his phone! And why is that?” 

“He has that track record with you, doesn’t he?” Dean sneered. He didn’t want to stand here and talk about that angel. He didn’t want to be reminded of how he didn’t even give Castiel the benefit of the doubt. He won’t hear him out. He can’t even look at him. Or it’s really hard and Dean can only, inwardly, squirm at his petulance. “He’s probably hiding somewhere. Ridden with guilt… you know… that’s what people do.” Dean said in a mocking manner. Sam grimaced.

“He wouldn’t normally be ignoring my messages this way and for this many days in a row. I am worried about him, Dean.” Sam said honestly. Dean turned away from his brother and started walking toward his room Sam followed.

“We got a case to look into. No time to chase after a guilt-ridden dick!” Dean grumbled as he grabbed his duffle bag off the chair. He walked over to the wall and started pulling an assortment of weaponry off and stuffing it into the empty bag. His angel blade, his trusty pistol, a machete, and his treasured boom stick. 

“Dean,’ Sam said quickly and angrily. “This is bullshit. We need to find- I’m going to look for him whether you like it or not and bring him home!” Dean tossed his bag over his shoulder, reached over to grab his denim jacket and keys and made his way to the door as if not listening. Sam followed close behind, whispering nonstop as if he was afraid someone would hear him. “I don’t get it, Dean… you were willing to let Jack live for killing mom! I watched you lower the fucking gun! You tossed it aside!”

“What Jack did was an accident!” Dean said quickly. Sam seethed as he continued.

“And what Cass did was to protect Jack! You forgave him for working with Crowley and unleashing the Leviathan! You forgave him for helping expel the angels from heaven! You forgave him for letting Lucifer in!” Sam stopped as Dean suddenly turned and glared at Sam.

“Those things didn’t get mom killed,” Dean said hollowly. Sam swallowed hard and rubbed at his eyes. 

“But mom being killed was an accident,’ Sam insisted. “By your own words, it was accidental. Dean,’ Sam sighed heavily. “Cass sees himself as Jack’s father. Right from the beginning, you have been more of a dad figure to me than dad was. You would have and still, do anything you can to protect and save me. Even lie and go behind my back! So, what the hell do you think Cass was doing? Are you still going to hold a grudge over something you would have done too? Something you have done!”

“We got a job to do, Sammy.” Dean turned away without saying a word, but his face told Sam all he needed for a response. The stone of Dean’s expression was harder than a diamond. It’s the same nonresponsive, robotic, ‘I’m going to hide how bad I am dying inside’ expression that Dean has had since mom died. “Bring your tablet and we can research on our way up to Maine.”

Sam knew that when Dean falls into one of these pits, it takes him a long time to bounce back. Maybe… maybe this case will help them figure it out and help Dean find his way back to himself. The rational big brother with an angel best friend. Sam reached over to the War Table as he passed it and scooped up his tablet and duffle bag. As he followed Dean up the stairs, he only wished Castiel were here right now. Because despite what Dean says, he is lost without him.


	6. Awake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack wakes up and is confronted by Billie and The Empty. He finds out what they want him to do. Will he be willing to do what it takes to save his loved ones?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a long one here. I didn't feel right breaking it up and I wouldn't have even known where too. I have read and reread this numerous times and I think I have all the spelling stuff in order. I don't have a beta reader so it's hard to catch them all. So forgive any grammatical mistakes, please!

Infinity was nothing. And Nothing was within and without. There is very little to do but sleep and let the cycle of thought run through the same memories that had been stored in this spirit’s mind for nearly three years. 

It is peaceful. Quiet. 

Yet he felt restless. 

He remembered someone saying to him in a gentle voice ‘Make the best of what is in your power and take the rest as it happens.” Jack is sure that was a quote from Epictetus. But it was said in a soft and warm voice. Caring and gentle. The sound of the voice made him smile. Slightly. Jack wasn’t even aware he could smile; he didn’t think he had a mouth anymore to do so. 

“…Sam…” The name rose to his lips automatically. A vague shape of a face. He remembered Sam quoted that to him when he was having a bad day. Jack cannot, for the time being, remember what it was that made his day bad, but perhaps the reason was irrelevant. And perhaps, too, so was the message. For that was a situation in the past. Nothing more than a minute stitch in the fabric of time and space.

Perhaps the focal point of this memory is Sam, himself. A man, gentle and guarding. Loving and faithful, who had always protected and cared for him. Anything about Sam made Jack feel good. So, he would think of Sam a lot. Of how Sam would visit him in his room once in a while and just talk to him. 

His large body would sit on the foot of the bed and let Jack ask a string of questions and he would answer everyone with as much thought as he could. He would kindly guide Jack back to a single path when too many variables and scenarios played out in his head as to what could possibly be the correct answer for a question that doesn’t have a definitive moral answer. 

“Don’t think too much. You’ll end up creating a problem that wasn’t there, to begin with.” Another voice said. This voice is different. Harsher, but no less caring. Jack remembers this person caring and showing it in a way that made it look as if he didn’t. This person didn’t like to show his true emotion. Preferring to show is masculinity as if that was all he was made of. 

“Dean,” Jack said. This name brought a smile to his lips too. Because despite how Dean is, Jack really cared about him and can see under the onion peel of emotions hidden by the machismo. Thing is, Jack, too, is relatively sure that Dean knows everyone else knows he is really a softy. 

Jack opened his eyes because he felt something moving around him. He didn’t even realize he had physical eyes to see. The blue of them shined in the sea of black. Golden fire wreathing cerulean blue irises. They stood out like two lighthouse lamps in a blanketing nighttime storm crashing on a shore. 

“Who is there?” Jack asked. His voice working perfectly although, as the words passed his lips, it wasn’t from his vocal cords. It came out more like a ring… a hundred small tinkling bells that echoed and sang back on itself. It was a pure and sweet sound. And even though it wasn’t presented in a way he was used too, with words, he understood what he said.

“You are a strange one. I have had Nephilim here before, but none of them are like you,’ The voice said. That voice too was familiar. Yet he could not bring himself to focus on the voice and locate where it was coming from. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. 

“I… am the son of Lucifer,’ Jack said. He didn’t feel threatened by the voice. He sat up a little more as an oily shadow separated itself from the darkness, coming toward him slowly. It traced a hand in the air in an inverted arch and a slit in the same shape of its hand gesture opened up on the bottom part of its head. Like a wide smile. Jack has seen that smile before on old movies. The Theatre mask-like smile. 

“Oh, I know who you are, boy. I woke you up.” The voice said. Jack stared at it. Wondering how it gave voice when its mouth didn’t move. 

“Who… or what… are you?” Jack asked. Although, he was relatively sure he knows who this is. The oily being with the theatre mask smile tilted its head the other way and lifted its shoulders in an unmistakable shrug.

“I am the entity that rules this space. I am the one who wakes you… or makes you sleep.” The Empty said. Jack sat up straighter and moved backward. He remembered, once upon a time, this Empty chasing him through Heaven. Jack only escaped this fate because Castiel gave his own life to save him… Castiel… Jack’s mind said the name softly. His father…

“You… you tried to drag me here, before! You chased me through Heaven! Threatened me…” Jack snapped off quickly. The Empty laughed cynically. 

“Oh, I did. But then Castiel came along to throw a monkey wrench into it. I… don’t like him very much! Ever since he woke up, I have been unable to get to sleep again! All I can think about is making him suffer for this insult.” The Empty quivered as it’s oily sheen slowly melted and took the form of Castiel. Jack’s eyes widened. 

“How are you doing that?” He asked in another snap. Holding out his hand before him as if ensuring this entity that he would not hesitate to attack. The Empty Castiel stepped forward, arms tight around his chest with a hand rubbing at his lips. 

“How did he wake up?” The Empty asked. Jack couldn’t answer. Not when it happened and not now. He didn’t even realize he had done anything when he wished for Castiel to come back. He just… wished it. And it happened. Jack shook his head.

“I don’t know. I just wished him to come back. And he did.”

“So, you made him wake up.” The Empty Castiel said as he looked off to a point that Jack could not see. “I knew it couldn’t have been God… he cannot control anything here. And you… are the only one powerful enough to make that happen. Not one other angel or demon in here is capable. Not even your daddy.” It smirked contemptuously. “Your real daddy, that is.” 

“Lucifer?” Jack blinked rapidly for a moment and The Empty Castiel smirked wider.

“He is probably the most powerful thing in here aside from you and yours truly, little guy. So… you can sort of see why I am very interested in having you. You…’ The Empty Castiel came closer with a sort of fugitive gleam in his eye. The sort of look someone anticipating the purchase of a rare object they have been searching for. “Are going to be my crown jewel.” 

“Enough!” A low and soft voice said from behind Jack and it made him spin around, scramble to his feet and stand so he can see the newcomer and The Empty. He looked her over. The dark skin and dark eyes. The black clothing. The scythe in her right hand. She was looking at… The Empty. Jack shifted his eyes to the other entity and noticed how… despite what it said, was backing away from them slightly.

“You can’t fault me for wanting him. He can protect me.” The Empty said. 

“That wasn’t the deal. He can protect us all. He can keep us in business. But… he can also take that all away. The only being capable besides you-know-who.” She said. The Empty sneered at her. A bitter twist of its lips as it conceded that it had better continue with the deal, lest its position along with everything else is wiped out by a rogue god. 

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Jack said. Her eyes turned back to him and she tilted her head as she appraised him. She walked forward slightly. 

“I know. That is why I know you will help us.’ She smiled. “Names Billie. I am a reaper. I am Death.”   
“Help you with what?” Jack asked hesitantly. 

“Oh… you know… stop your Grandfather from smiting the world.” The Empty said in that irritating and scornful tone. “Like it or not, little man, your Grandpapa is going to wipe everything clean. Earth… The universe. Blow out the sun. Crush the moon. He will destroy heaven and hell. And if there is no Heaven and Hell… there is no Empty to fill. I won’t exist. I am not letting that happen!” It said tensely. “I like it here too much to let one little bratty god throw a tantrum because his toys aren’t doing what he told them to do!” 

“How can I possibly… how can I go up against God? I am dead! He killed me!” Jack asked. 

“Yeah… about that…’ Billie said as she started pacing back and forth. “You are a Nephilim. Nephilim becomes stronger than the angel that sired it. You are the offspring of an Archangel. Jack Kline,’ Billie said seriously as she paused her pacing to look him in the face. “…you are stronger than your father. And equal to your grandfather.”

Jack shook his head and looked down at his feet. He had never successfully learned how to harness his full power. Never tapped it. He has only used some and most of the time when it was used, someone got hurt. Someone died. The thought of even using a quarter of his power frightened him. It got Mary killed. 

He killed his own mother just being born. They expect him to be able to take on God when he can’t even trust himself to hold his angst over normal human agonizing? 

“I don’t know how you can think that. I have never even used more than a quarter of my power. I have had so many people, demons and angels telling me how powerful I am… but I have never been able to do more than hurt or kill people.” Jack muttered, but his head was pulled up, so he was looking at Billie. Her hand wrapped around his jaw.

“You are strong enough now. You just need to learn how to use those powers. And I have a plan, Jack Kline, that will boost your strength… and allow you to do some good, be proud of yourself, by ridding the world of some of the vilest filth imaginable.” She said in a dread whisper. Jack looked back at her, confused.

“I… want to be good.” He said. His words sounding strange because of the way she was squeezing his cheeks. The way a mother, frustrated with her child’s inattention, would hold his face. She raised an eyebrow.

“Then do as I say. Follow my instruction and you,’ She said softly as she leaned in and put her mouth near his ear. “will save the world. And everyone in it. Including your dear Winchester brothers.”   
Jack listened. He wanted to save them. If he couldn’t save anyone else, including Mary, then he will save them, whether they wanted him too or not. He owed it to them. He owed Dean for sparing him. 

Jack remembers Dean lowering the gun. He remembers how Dean looked at him. Jack is certain that he was going to be forgiven. It may not have ever closed the wound completely, but Jack felt it, deep inside that Dean excused him the thing he unintentionally thrust on them when he killed Mary.

“I will do it. However, I have a condition.” Jack said, in sudden inspiration. Billie looked at him quizzically.

“Go on.” She said and Jack looked at the Empty.

“I will save all of you. Do my best, that is… and if I do save all of you. You will not claim Castiel until it is time for him to come here! Not before.” Jack said as he pointed at the entity. The Empty looked furious.

“Oh no! No deal! That little microbe is MINE!” The Empty insisted as he thrust his hands down at his sides. Billie turned her head sharply and looked at him. “This is all HIS fault!” 

“What exactly was the deal?” Billie asked.

“He chased me through Heaven. He caught up to me, too. But Castiel found me in my mothers' personal heaven and offered to give his own life to allow my soul to go free.’ Jack said as he looked distrusting at The Empty. “Castiel said he was ready to go… but then… you…’ He pointed at the Empty. “You said you wouldn’t take him then. You said you wanted to make him suffer. You would take him when he finally allowed himself to be happy! I will save you if you recant that deal!” 

“You are not making this easy. The one thing I look forward too and you want me to just give it up?” The Empty asked contemptuously. “I have many prizes here. But none of them are going to be worth it if I cannot make Castiel be awake in here and lose his mind for all eternity as he thinks of everything, he almost had… but lost because of you!” 

“If I don’t stop my grandfather, there won’t be anyone else. Not even Castiel. Either you withdraw that deal, or you can just put me back to sleep.” Jack said stubbornly. The Empty actually hissed as it backed up another step, making the Castiel facade it wore look more like a petulant child. Billie chuckled a little.

“It can’t put you back to sleep or it would have done it when Castiel woke up. Isn’t that right?” Billie said with a snigger. “It can only wake you. And apparently… you can wake other beings in here too.” She looked at Jack.

“I can wake more?” Jack asked. Billie smiled and nodded. She knew The Empty would not like the idea of Jack waking its other angels and demons that have been sleeping in here for eons. 

“Oh yeah. Wake them all up. Leave them in here.’ Billie said and she looked back at The Empty. “You’d have no choice but to expel them all.” The Empty waved a hand at her sharply. 

“Go ahead. They will all just die in droves again anyway. They will all eventually end up back here!”

“I can keep the angels and demons away from here. You know I can. I like my position as much as you do!’ Billie held the scythe harder in her grip. “Believe me, I have not much love for the angel either. He killed me. But. When he did, I got a promotion. Not much to complain about there, I guess. So, if not claiming Castiel until it is his time is all Jack wants in return for saving you and everyone else, then you had better give it to him!”

“Oh, Alright! Fine! Keep your little bug if he makes you so happy! He will get here eventually, anyway! Just stop your grandfather from disassembling everything!” It said diffidently. Jack smiled and looked at Billie. 

“What do I need to do?”

“First. You need to save your friends. They are trapped in a hoard of the walking dead. You can teleport them back to a safe place.” Billie said. Jack shook his head.

“I have only ever teleported myself. I have never… teleported others.” Billie reached out and held her fingers over Jack’s brow. Jack pulled back for a second, unsure of what she was meaning to do. He thought of Dean and Sam berating him for trusting anyone with his body on that capacity and his Winchester instinct kicked in. Billie clicked her tongue and kept her arm out with her fingers extended toward his forehead. 

“You don’t get to be a reaper and not pick up a few tricks.” She touched his head with her index and middle finger and suddenly, inexplicably, he knew how to move his friends from harm. “Move them. Don’t let them know it’s you.”

“Why not?” Jack asked and The Empty tutted irritably.

“Because, dunderhead, if your little Winchesters know you are alive, then in all likelihood, grandpapa will find out and just kill you again! And Billie…” 

Jack looked from The Empty to Billie. He closed his eyes and reached out. Envisioning his lifeforce descending from The Empty, through the network of reaper paths and tunnels that connected from The Empty to Earth, Heaven and Hell. He spiraled like a white glow. Closing in on the earth like a giant space telescope. Getting closer to the last place he was alive. 

He could see small spots on the ground under him as he skimmed across the atmosphere. Huge crowds of possessed dead closing in on a pinpoint in the middle of a cemetery. A flash of intense blue-white light flared up for a moment and died down. It was angel power. No doubt it was Castiel. Jack free fell, as a light that was no more the size of a snowflake and getting bigger as he dropped. He can sense them under him. He can feel their emotions. Tumultuous. Painful. 

When he entered the small stone building, he was able to feel the location of each of them. Dean, in the corner, Castiel on his knees holding his earthbound body and Sam just behind him. He was able to see them now. He wanted to call out to them. Tell them he was there. But he remembered what Billie said. He didn’t want to mess up again.

“It’s okay… you are safe.” Jack said in a soft whisper. He could see the look in Castiel’s eyes, the confused wonder. Dean and Sam had their faces covered as his glow engulfed them. And he felt them inside him. Their souls were cradled in his light like babies swathed in cloth in the arms of their mother. It was tender. Beautiful. But also full of grief. Jack soothed them with a breath from his lips. 

The warmth of his breath brushing their faces as he picked them up and brought them to the bunker caused the two men and the angel in his grasp to relax and close their eyes. It was a place he knew they would be safe. 

As he placed them to the floor of the library area, he looked at them for a while longer before he felt a hand touch his shoulder. He did not want to leave them. He wanted to go back and stay. He wanted to tell them he was sorry. That he was sorry for everything.

But then he was looking at the darkness of the Empty. It made him sad.

“Will I ever be able to go back to them?” He asked wretchedly, fearing the answer. She smiled.

“Oh, eventually you will have too. They are just as elaborate a part of stopping the end times as you are. Only… they cannot replace God. They are only men.” She saw how Jack’s eyes widened in shock.

“Replace? God?” 

“Think about what he is aiming to do. He wants to destroy everything. Leaving nothing in its wake.’ The Empty said as he walked forward. His visage still as Castiel. Jack looked at him untrustingly but listening all the same. “If you think Amara was bad, just think of… Nothing. At least something existed with Amara. Chaotic, yes… but it wasn’t an endless void of inexistence.”

Jack looked at his surroundings as if he was having a hard time seeing what The Empty meant seeing this place looked exactly what he was describing. Vast planes of open black with no possible end in sight in any direction. 

“There are beings in here. You just cannot see them.’ The Empty said and grabbed Jack’s sleeve, yanking him to his side. Jack was very uncomfortable with this. It looks and feels like Castiel, but it is not, and he had a hard time looking at it. “Why… one of your uncles is right there.”

Jack looked and he saw nothing. No matter how he squinted and tilted his head. The Empty Castiel clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes. “Only I can actually see them, dummy. It would scare you to see how many are in here.” 

This is not what was attracting Jack. It was the fact that it was one of his uncles. He had met a couple of them. “Which one is it?” Jack asked curiously. “Which one of my uncles?” 

The Empty Castiel smirked and shrugged. “It’s enough to know he is right there. I don’t want you waking anymore up. Especially that one. My point of telling you this isn’t so you can have a family reunion, kiddo… it’s to tell you that every celestial being. From the formation of time. Has come here. Angels and Demons alike. I have them in my collection. Ready to be called forth to service again.” 

“Only we have not had a reason to do that. Until now.” Billie said. “Aside from you, and The Empty who runs this place, no one has access to this place but a reaper. It is how we make sure that other angels and Demons, sans the exceptionally powerful, can wake anything up in here. And usually they don’t. But that is where you can.”

“Which one of my uncles is there?!” Jack asked again a little more forcefully.

“It’s not important.” The Empty said quickly. 

“If it isn’t important, you would not have said it! And if it isn’t important, you can tell me!” Jack said, a golden light wreathed his eyes. 

“It’s Gabriel.” Billie said quickly before The Empty can argue. Jack turned his head to her again. She smiled. “I am a reaper. Dead things. Invisible or not. Kinda my thing, remember?”

Jack turned toward her. “What do you mean?”

“Meaning is irrelevant. So here is the real scoop. Waking up every Demon and Angel that has ever been brought here will flood the earth, Heaven and Hell to it’s boundaries. It will cause Chuck to have to act immediately. He will be distracted by them and that will give you time to do what you need to do.” Billie said as she stepped up closer to the Nephilim. 

“I’m not sure I understand.” Jack said. Clearly The Empty Castiel didn’t understand either as his face twisted in slowly dawning horror. 

“You… You WERE planning on that from the beginning!” The Empty hissed. “You sneaky little minx.” 

“Yeah, well… if I came to you and said, “Let my people go,” you would have refused. With Jack here, you cannot… I will just have him do it.” 

The Empty trembled with obvious fury. 

“Besides…’ Jack smiled as he looked over his shoulder at The Empty. “You just said they would all end up back here anyway.” He turned his head back to Billie. “Tell me what I need to do.”  
Billie smiled and nodded. “You are going to wake up Gaea.”

The Empty gasped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me a while to get this out, and if you were waiting, I am so sorry. I am not entirely sure anyone is actually reading as I am getting no feedback. So *shrug* Either I am a shitty writer or no one is interested LOL. Oh well... I guess I will do it for myself.   
> It took me a long time to get this one out because I was in the hospital for 6 days. Yes, I was tested for Covid-19 even though when I went in there they suspected that was not what was wrong with me. And it's not. I have gallbladder disease and I was really sick during my duration in the hospital. I am home now on medications and bed rest. I will be needing surgery soon too. So hopefully I can get out a little more before then.


	7. The Marker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chuck is looking for The First Marker

This time of the year, Mid Maine weather can’t make up its collective mind. It wants to be sunny and warm, but winter is not finished and its huffing and puffing, blowing its cold breath over the land, forcing these Mainers to bundle up despite the warm sun beating down on them.

Chuck stood outside the door to a two-story gray apartment building. Lengths of yellow police tape stretching across the slightly rusted yellow door. He hardly felt the cold wind on his skin. He hardly felt the sun either. However, the small flock of robins that were in the trees behind him had flown away at his approach. 

To be honest, this wasn’t his first choice. To be standing here, looking for her. The last time he seen her was before he created everything. And to be honest she won’t be happy with him. She told him before she left to share the universe with his sister. And that is not what he did. He thrust Amara into a box for eternity and went on creating unchecked for eons. 

How was he supposed to know his own creations would gain the knowhow to let her out? And most anyone who knows the story knows how she got out and what happened after that. Yet, as far as Chuck knows, he and Amara are the only two who know about… about Gaea. He had gone to Amara after all this started and begged her to side with him on this. Honestly, he thought it was a long shot, what he hadn’t expected, and he wasn’t sure why he didn’t, was Amara’s cold indifference to his plight.

‘You want me to help you? After what you did to me? You actually think I would be willing to put all that aside so easily after a mere year of familial bonding,’ Amara asked as she walked away from Chuck. 

“Yeah, you know, I thought we mended all that unfortunate stuff that happened before. And remember! You did try to kill me! Doesn’t that count for anything?” Chuck asked, temporizing. 

Amara scoffed as she adjusted her purse over her arm and again adjusted her glasses as her hand fell on the doorknob to her hotel room. “After a year? You have to make up for billions of years of me being trapped in a cage! You didn’t even give me a chance! Or a benefit of the doubt, brother! Sure, I may have done exactly what you thought I would… but you didn’t even do me the honor of finding out. You just threw me away, aided by your new toys. Totally forgetting what Mother said! You hurt me, brother! And while I have forgiven you for that… I am not willing to throw everything into the mixing pot to pull your bacon out of the fire! You left me alone and afraid and fending for myself for billions of years. And in a way…’ She turned toward the door and stopped. “I am now doing the same to you. Let me know how it feels, brother.” 

Of course, Amara walked away. Chuck was left in her hotel room with no one but himself to aide him against the Winchesters. His hand came up again, as it did in the hotel room, and touched the scabbed over bullet wound in his left shoulder. He has had a lot less oomph since Sam shot him. He had known of the possibility of such an event, but he just… he just didn’t think they would have the gall. Chuck sighed and rolled his eyes. Of course, they did. He made them to be so. So why is it so damned surprising? 

He reached over and touched the doorknob of the rusted yellow door and looked up to see an elderly woman peaking out her curtains at him. He just stared at her for a few seconds and she vanished behind her drapes as if something scared her. Chuck shook his head. Is this what the woman who lived here had to deal with every time she came and went from her apartment? He tried to turn the knob, but it was locked.

With a snap of his finger, the door was unlocked, and the police line was pulled to the side. Chuck was standing inside the apartment looking around at the meager living conditions of the woman who once occupied this space. He felt slightly sad for her. She didn’t deserve this pitiful existence. Yet she chose to have this. Not wanting much. Chuck smiled only for a second at the woman’s precocity. She believed the less attachment to worldly desires, the better. Of course, that is what they teach you in bible school. And she, while not a churchgoer much, believed the less accessory, the better. 

His eyes shifted to the bed. Lines and number panels placed in areas of interest. Of course, Chuck knew exactly what this was although he can just see the cops now scrambling to figure out how the Earth had managed to bust its way up through the foundation and through her bed. Of course, they would not assume this is where she went. She is a missing person to them. Chuck, on the other hand, knows where she is. She is in there. He stepped closer to the bed and placed his hand on the earth covering it. He can feel her… not the woman…but her… Gaea. It's been a terribly long time since he has seen and felt her. 

“…Mother…” Chuck said. His palms and fingers shifting the dirt under it as he moved it back and forth. He can feel Mother’s energy there. It’s very faint, but it is unmistakably there. He closed his eyes as he dug his fingers, down to his wrist, into the pile, yet the strength of the power did not change. Not even a fraction. If she is there, she is very deep. Deeper than he can go. He would need more time and strength to get to her.

He pulled his wrist out of the dirt and thought about it. He walked over to the kitchen counter and started looking thru the cabinets. Looking for anything the woman that owned this apartment could be hiding. He found little. A bit of marijuana. A bottle of wine. But nothing really good. He did find some coffee so he put on a pot of that and sat on her sofa with a sigh and watched her plants in the window. They were starting to wilt; he snapped his fingers again and they came back to full bloom. He smiled and sighed. He held the big mug of coffee to his chest as he crossed his legs and watched the plants. 

In order for him to get a hold of Gaea, he would need to have help. Amara is out of the question. The only other being that could have helped him is now dead. Chuck regretted that move. As soon as it happened, he wished he hadn’t done it. Yes, Jack is a dangerous being. Nephilim, by his own words, are an abomination. But Jack… his grandson, if he was a human and was able to have such things, could have overthrown him. 

Chuck was willing, some time ago, to let Amara take over the entire planet. He was willing to go. Die. But because his creations wanted to live and at the time, he felt he owed it to them, he allowed them to continue. Trusting to the Winchesters to figure it out. And they did, as he knew they would. It bought them a few more years. 

What no one, not even Amara, knows is that when he decided to throw in the towel back then… that was supposed to be the end of the story. And because the Winchesters changed it… he has had to scramble to make up the continuation. He was never really that good at pressure writing. Now he is trying to scramble for an ending and when you have to hit a deadline, a lot of mistakes are made. Details are overlooked and you find that discontinuities arise. 

The biggest continuity break is Jack Kline. 

Chuck took a sip of the coffee and sighed. It tasted very nice. 

Chuck knew the second Jack was conceived. And boy howdy, was it hard to not come stomping down here and putting that light out. But as he watched Jack, his innocence, his desire for good, he just couldn’t. He saw potential in the boy. And like Chuck had told Dean a while back, he has to let the humans walk on their own. If he doesn’t, if he keeps aiding them, and holding their hands, he is enabling them. He wants them to grow… he wants them to be enlightened. They can’t do that if he is constantly stunting their growth by shutting down the avenues of exploration.

Not that this is why Jack was so interesting. Jack was interesting because Chuck finally saw a way of… stepping down. A way of letting the light remain without him being the one holding the torch. After a forever gripping it, he is tired. Jack is fresh, new. But then the other discontinuities came in. Other worlds invading this one. Jack burning off his soul.

The lack of a soul is actually what made Jack dangerous. If Jack had become a new lord and leader with a soul, how the paradise on earth would have been…bliss. He would have been much more forgiving. Kinder. He would have been everything that everyone on Earth who believes in Chuck wanted. The things Chuck cannot do because he does not have a soul will be given freely by Jack.   
Chuck closed his eyes. It was terrible, some of the limitations he placed on humans. It made way for sin and guilt and other things that make the humans seem like barbarians and it hurts. It’s his own fault, in the end. Jack could have stopped all that. 

But now the story has changed. He has to fix things by destroying it. Chuck wished there was another way. He looked toward the bed at the center where the dirt was the darkest. His last option was to talk to her. And You would think being such a powerful being, that he would just be able to wake her up, but he would need Amara to do that. Or Jack. And he had neither.   
Chuck heard the coffee maker make pop and hiss from the kitchen and he looked in that direction. He bit his lip after taking another sip of coffee and thought. Almost everything was written down, every spell, every story from the beginning of time. And while there is nothing in known existence that shows how to wake Gaea, that doesn’t mean there can’t be. Chuck smiled. He has done it before. Given the Winchesters, some obscure bit of writing that leads them to answers. So why not now? Why does Chuck have to do all the work? After all, the story isn’t about him. It is about the Winchesters.


	8. Welcome to Maine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean make their way to Maine on a case

_The halls of the Bunker are bathed in a red glow. The old alarms and warning systems bleated to a largely empty facility. The smell of cordite heavy in the air. Sam didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he smiled. Bodies of faceless people laying strewn across the floors of the bunker were little more than parts of the décor to him. He walked slowly and with no purpose or fear as he adjusted his white jacket’s cuffs._

_The form-fitting suit hugging to every curve and angle of his body as he stepped over a rather familiar person. Bobby Singer. His head had been twisted around. The look on his face was priceless too. He looked so shocked and sad. Sam sniggered._

_He came out to the library room. He took a seat with his back to the rest of the bunker. It mattered not that he did not see who was coming. There was only one other person here with him. Sam is confident that this person would not just pull a gun and shoot without doing his best to talk his brother out of this spree. Humans are so predictable. At least the Winchesters are._

_And like clockwork, Dean comes sneaking around the corner, holding his trusted gun up in front of him. Poor simpleton. Did Dean actually think he could sneak up on him like this?_

_“Hello, Dean,” Sam said with a smile on his face. He heard the unmistakable sound of a gun hammer being pulled back. It made him smile wider. How presumptuous that Dean would assume that a simple bullet would stop him. If the colt didn’t work so long ago, what made him think this would?_

_“Sammy… please… don’t make me do this. You have to fight him!” Dean said. Sam could not see Dean’s expression, but it is clear the older brother is very upset. Sam tilted his head and laughed as he licked his teeth._

_“It’s too late. Sammy is now gone. And you will not stop me with your piddly little gun. But if it makes you feel better to try, Dean… go ahead. Shoot your brother in the head. Smear his brains all over the table.” Lucifer said out of Sam’s mouth._

_“…please… let him go…’ Dean said. No, he begged. He begged for Sam to be let go. But Lucifer just smiled and readjusted in the seat. Clearly the answer was no. A shot rang out. One loud bang. Sam’s head flew forward, and his face hit the table. A fan of red and pulpy matter stained the table. And for a second the only sound was Dean’s ragged breathing and a keening whine that started to come up from inside Dean’s chest._

_It was silenced before it could reach his lips as the form of his brother lurched in the seat. Sam sat up. His eyes blazing red for a moment before the exit wound healed over. Dean, backing away slowly, knew it was a longshot. He also understood this was the end of the line for him as he lowered his arms and head._

_“Nice try, Dean. Unfortunately, this is the end for you.” Sam said. No, Lucifer said._

_The last thing Dean knew was the sight of his brothers’ head before his head too was wrenched around, his neck breaking in one swift movement. He fell to the floor and the light, flickering between white and red, faded into nothing. ___

__\--_ _

__Sam jerked in his seat. He sat up straighter and used the heel of his hand to wipe a thin layer of drool from his chin as he looked around him. Nighttime lay outside Baby’s windows and interstate lights went by backlight by aglow by a full moon. Its full bright face wreathed in a halo of crystal ice. He rubbed at his face after a quick glance at Dean, who had clearly noticed the abrupt wake from sleep.  
“You okay?” Dean asked. Sam cleared his throat, trying not to think of the feeling of breaking Dean’s neck. He actually felt the vertebrae snapping as if he had his hands on Dean’s head when it twisted. It made Sam clench in on himself and his hands came together, two large palms and fingers fighting together in his lap as if he were trying to force the sensation, he didn’t even experience in real life, off his skin and nerves. As if it were etched there and he was trying to blot it out. _ _

__“…Yeah, just… bad dream,” Sam said as he cleared his throat. For a moment there was silence. But Sam could tell that would not be the end of it._ _

__“Another one?” Dean asked. “Do I want to even know what this one was about?”_ _

__“Probably not,” Sam said simply as his body tentatively relaxed against the inside of the door and his eyes glared out to the dark tree line as it zoomed by. “All I know is that they are incredibly vivid. Dean, I haven’t had dreams like this in a long time. And all of them… they seem to be centered around… well, all the bullshit we have been going through over the years.”_ _

__“What does that mean? Like… Lucifer and that sort of bullshit?” Dean asked, keeping his eyes on the road. They had been through a lot. Some a lot more severe than others._ _

__“Lucifer… Azazel. The Leviathan. Me drinking demon blood. It’s like… I keep seeing things that could have happened if we didn’t stop the tide.” Sam said sullenly as he looked down in his lap.  
“What… so you saw what would happen if you went full-on Beelzebub on us?” _ _

__Just for a moment, Sam didn’t move. He just looked down at his palms in his lap and then he slowly nodded. Dean groaned and looked back at the road._ _

__“Dean… what if… what if the dreams aren’t just dreams? What if I am seeing possible outcomes- ‘Sam started and despite his usual calm to these things, his level-headedness, he started to feel a bit panicky. It may have something to do with the fact that he can still feel Dean’s neck-breaking in his hands._ _

__“Wait- kill the motor! Lucifer is in the Empty! He’s gone! So, there is no way you can be possessed by him again! Azazel is also there. You kicked the demon blood habit a long time ago, so you have been riding the sobriety wagon and I won’t let you just abandon ship!” Dean said._ _

__“We don’t know how things will turn out! Chuck can just change things on impulse! Funnel us right into scope! And the thing is, is we won’t even know it!” Sam said as he ran his hand through his hair._ _

__“Well…’ Dean licked his lips as he gripped his steering wheel tightly. “… Chuck may be predictable. But We will just have to be unpredictable. Do the things he doesn’t expect us to do.”  
“Like what? He knows what we are doing all the time! Dean, everything we say and do, he knows about it!” Sam said frantically._ _

__“… Yeah, you know… I don’t know why, but I don’t think he does. Not now.’ Dean shook his head. “I am not even sure why I think this. I just do. I don’t think he has known everything that has been happening since he took off with Amara. He knows most. But for some reason, I don’t think he sees everything we are doing. And for some reason… I think… I think Amara is blocking us from him.”_ _

__Sam turned to face Dean; concern etched on his face. “Why would you think it’s Amara?”_ _

__“I don’t know, man. I recognize the way she feels. I can’t exactly feel her… but like… a scent of her? Like she was wearing perfume or something and she walked through a room and the scent of it is still there even though she isn’t,” Dean said, realizing how crazy that sounds._ _

__Even if he was feeling Amara, there is no reason to assume she was on their payroll. She may have stopped her bid to destroy everything her brother had made and even admitted that Dean wasn’t really what she was looking for in a partner, but that doesn’t mean that if Chuck didn’t approach her and ask her to help him in doing exactly what she meant to do from the get-go, that she would agree to help him._ _

__For a moment they were both silent. Just the sound of the engine and the tires chewing up asphalt and spewing out miles as they passed the sign that told them they were entering Waterville Maine. Both Dean and Sam observed it as they passed it._ _

__“We’re about twenty miles out from our point of interest. Let’s go over it again,” Dean said as he turned off-ramp 127 and into nighttime Waterville. Late night, there were not many cars and he hit a green light and immediately took a right as Sam pulled up his tablet._ _

__The soft glow of the screen filled the interior of the car. Sam scrolled through some obscure designs and old clippings of stories revolving around masses of dirt just appearing out of nowhere. Truth is, there wasn’t much. There is some lore about monsters being made of dirt. But none of them say anything about these monsters coming up through feet of hard cement and wood, not to mention someone’s bed to pull them down into the mattress and then vanish with nothing but the dirt it moved through left behind._ _

__“To be honest, there isn’t much. I mean, unless we are talking about some freak termite or gopher. Maybe a giant mole or something, there is nothing that fits the criteria.” Sam said as he continued scrolling through the seemingly endless streams of golem articles and stories about Talos. But unless there are Greek Gods made of bronze burrowing around under Skowhegan Maine, that too was off the list. Dean inwardly shivered. He didn’t like the thought of some giant termite running around and just what size shoe it would take to squash it._ _

__“There may be something in Angel lore… unscripted- see this is why we should have brought Cas with us!” Sam said irritably. Dean rolled his eyes._ _

__“We have figured out this sort of thing before without angel intervention. I say we get in there, use the EMF reader, then we can possibly rule anything spiritual out. I just hope to fuck this doesn’t have anything to do with Chuck.”_ _


	9. Somebody's knocking at the door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Sam make it to Skowhegan to look into a case of a missing woman who vanished into a pile of dirt. When they get there, they got a lot more than they bargained for. It is clear to say that this is not an ordinary case.

Sitting outside the apartment, Sam and Dean watched a soft light move around inside the dark interior. Someone was in there. They didn’t know if it was a cop or another hunter. On this premise, they hesitated. If it was neither one, but perhaps whatever it was that attacked the tenant, they can try to deal with it. If it was just someone who broke in, they can muscle the person out. If it is a cop… they can explain it away that they were just up to visit their friend. 

Either way, they cannot sit on their hands and wait anymore. Whoever was inside wasn’t bothering to hide that they were in there. The door was partially open, and the tape had been hastily torn to the side. And not for the first time, Dean got an uncomfortable feeling. Late night, yes, but the town just seemed too quiet. They had not seen one car on their way here after leaving Waterville. Not one person. They drove by a local gas station and there was no movement inside the windows. No cars at the pumps. The only sign of life was a stray cat that ran across the road. And the blinking red and yellow traffic lights. 

“I still say something else is going on here,” Dean said quietly as he reached into his pocket for his gun as the soft light, that he took to be a torchlight, swept from one end of the window to the other inside the apartment. 

“It’s 11:30 on a weeknight. We don’t know, maybe this town has a curfew or something.” Sam said, although it was obvious, he did not believe it either. Dean cut a look at him before he took his door and opened it as quietly as he could, holding the gun up before him as he left the drivers' side door open in the case a hasty retreat was necessary. 

Dean felt Sam quietly approach him from behind as they closed in on the door. They silently moved through the dark on a side of the building that faced away from the main road. Dean reached forward and put the barrel of the gun between the door and the door jam. He swung it open and held his breath as he stepped into the cramped breezeway. Sam right behind him. Both of them pulled out penlights as they neared the inner door which was also chalked open slightly but beyond was dark aside from the gentle sweep of soft light. 

Tensing, Dean kicked the flimsy inner door in and shone the light ahead of him as he jumped in, Sam coming in behind and aiming to the left just as an overhead light popped on. Sam instantly lowered his weapon when his light trained on a familiar face.

“Cas,” Sam whispered as he pushed Dean forward, who had frozen in place, his concentration icing over with anger at the realization that Cas had followed them there anyway. Well, got here before them! How did he even know?! Sam shut the door behind him, closing all three men in. 

“There isn’t anything here. I used your EMF meter, but it doesn’t appear to be anything spiritual.” Cas said as he gestured toward the bed. His face is devoid of any emotion as he pointedly didn’t look at Dean. He could feel those eyes on him, though and it was very obvious he was trying to not react or turn his eyes to Dean. Sam pushed between them to the bed to look at it closely.   
“So… let me get this straight.’ Dean faced Sam and pointed at Cas. “Was all that talk about needing him for this just you gearing me up because you already invited him along?” 

Sam looked quickly at Dean from over his shoulder and did not answer as he looked closer at the bed, making a deal of spreading the dirt back and forth under his hands. When Sam did not answer, it sent a clear message to Dean. The older Winchester pinched his fingers around the bridge of his nose.  
“I told you that we can do this without help, Sam!”

“Well if you can tell me why a woman was sucked through her mattress by who knows what the fuck… then we don’t need all the help we can friggin get!” Sam said angrily without turning to face Dean. Dean shot a look at Castiel, who had turned away from both of them and was standing near the coffee maker.

“If it helps.’ Cas said softly, halting the argument. “It appears that someone has been here recently. The coffee maker still has coffee in it-‘He started to point out but Dean cut him off.  
“Cuz the lady didn’t drink coffee before she vanished.” Cas turned to look at Dean.

“Her name is Vanessa. Vanessa Welch. She was a 42-year-old single woman on disability. She had been gone for days before they discovered she was missing.” Castiel said curtly. He reached for the filter basket of the coffee maker and pulled it out. “The coffee grounds are still wet. And the water well still has traces of condensation on the inside. If she has been missing for days, these things would have long since been dry.” 

Dean said nothing as he turned toward Sam. Sam, who had been standing up from the floor, had been dusting his knees off as he looked at his brother.  
“Just like they said. The dirt is coming up from the floor and through the damned bed.’ He said. He looked at Castiel. “Anything in angel lore that describes this?” 

Castiel came to stand next to them and as he looked down at the bed, he shook his head.

“No.’ Castiel started and Dean huffed. 

“Not so much help now aside from the wet coffee grounds.” 

“Shut up, Dean!” Sam snapped. Castiel, whose eyes were closed at the moment, opened and he licked his lips before he continued. 

“But I may know who to ask. This is more of an Earth thing than a spiritual thing. What we may be dealing with is much bigger and stronger than mere ghosts and monsters. It may be heavily leaning toward ancient magic and Gods. Things that haven’t been spoken of since the dawn of time. Things that haven’t been awake since before Eve and the Leviathan. It may even predate God and Amara.” 

With this onslaught of new information, Sam cut an ‘I told you so’ look at Dean before he looked at Castiel. Dean leaned against the dresser next to the bed as he listened to Sam and Castiel converse. His eyes focusing on the dirt on the bed. For some reason, he felt the need to go over and touch it. For as much dirt that covered the bed and under it- in it too- there is no smell of soil in the room. Dean thought that was a bit odd.

As he stared at the soil, he felt as if he could not hear Sam and Castiel speaking as clearly as he should. His focus seemed to be hyperintense on the center of the well of dirt. Like he has tunnel vision all of a sudden and nothing was more obvious than the depths to which the dirt came up from the ground. As if that wasn’t just mere topsoil. It’s like the dirt was old. From deep within the veins of the Earth, dark and pulsing. Dean can feel it pulling him forward. His breath coming in slow inhalations and even slower exhalations. A subterranean thrumming, like a repeated drumroll echoing in his head as he stepped toward the bed, extending his hand to the center of the mattress. 

“Just based on these facts, I don’t think it can be anything usual. I am sure, at least 90% sure… that this may even be a cosmic being. And if that is the case… I am at a loss of how to stop it.” Castiel finished as he looked passed Sam’s shoulder to Dean’s back, who was facing the bed and appeared not to have heard a single thing they said.

“Dean, did you hear any of this? It appears we are gonna need more than just us three here. Dean?” Sam turned. Dean’s back was to them. His shoulders trembling as he drew in ragged breaths and his shaking hand touched the center of the soil and he started digging in it. Flinging dirt this way and that. Throwing great gobs of it to the sides as if he was convinced there was something in there.

“Dean?” Castiel called him and stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder. Dean shrugged him off.

“What? I can hear you! But I can’t tell what you’re saying! Say it louder!” Dean yelled… at the bed. Castiel grabbed both of Dean’s shoulders and pulled him back and again, Dean shook him off, plunging both hands down into the soft soil and indiscriminately flung dirt around like a dog digging a hole. 

“Dean! There isn’t anything there!” Sam said as he too pulled Dean back. Sam combined with Castiel was able to hold Dean back from digging in the dirt. And they both heard it. They heard something that sounded almost like the far-off rumble of a boiler kicking on in an old house. A constant low grumble, like a rockslide under the floor and insulation.   
“What the hell is that?” Sam asked as he stared at the bed. Castiel shook his head as he held onto Dean’s struggling right arm. 

“I don’t know.”

“I can almost hear you! Just say it a little louder!” Dean said loudly. But It was just the continuous rumble that Sam and Castiel heard.

“She is moving. I came here earlier to see Vanessa, but it appears that She has already begun waking up.” A voice said behind them and they all turned in unison. Sam and Dean held up guns to face at the newcomer and Castiel slid his Angel Blade out of his sleeve. It was Chuck. Instantly, Dean fired the gun. The bullet went wide. It punched a hole in the flimsy door just over Chuck’s left shoulder. They could hear the outer door’s glass pane shatter. Chuck shook his head with a sad smile.

“Shoot first, ask questions later. That’s typical of you, Dean.” Chuck said and lifted his hand up. Sam was only able to hold up a pacifying hand and grunt ‘wait’ before Chuck snapped his fingers and Dean and Sam fell to the bed and floor next to Castiel. 

**//**//**

“Dean! Sam!” Castiel said hurriedly as he reached over to touch Dean’s neck to see if he could feel a pulse, and to Sam. 

“Oh, I didn’t kill them, Castiel. I just made them go to sleep ‘til we have had a little chat.” Chuck assured. But he still watched as Castiel checked the brothers over carefully. He was patient as Castiel touched in various spots before he stood and held the Angel Blade up before him. “Once upon a time, you trusted and revered me, Castiel. Is this disdain I see in your eyes because I forced your favorite boys to go to sleep? Because I am about to close up shop? Or because I killed the Nephilim?” 

“I… spent the entirety of my existence…’ Castiel said, his voice breaking as he looked at Chuck. “In reverence of you. I stood by you on every turn of events, my lord. I have destroyed for you. I have… done everything you have asked of me.”

As Castiel enumerated all of his existence within his fathers’ light, Chuck nodded as if he were agreeing. But after several more seconds of this, Chuck once again held up his hand to silence the Angel. He brought his hands to his front as soon as Castiel fell silent.

“You don’t think I know how loyal you were to me? And yet… I told you to take Dean from Hell. And what slowly happened after that?’ Chuck asked. “What did you do?”

Castiel lowered his head. His eyes turned toward Dean, who was laying on his back on the bed. He thought back to the moment he had penetrated the furthest reaches of Hell and his hands first touched Dean’s abused skin. How his hand burned the flesh under it. Castiel wondered if there was even a mark there now. He remembers clearly, helping Dean escape Zakariya. He had willingly fallen to help the Winchesters. Specifically, Dean. His feelings for Dean growing more and more profound as the years passed and he could no more leave him than worship The Morningstar.   
“I did what I had to. And by your own rule… what you wanted me to do.” 

“Faithfully! I never had someone so dutifully follow my instructions as you. Well, there have been others but… you… you have danced the dance I set for you without fail.’ Chuck slid across the floor in a little mock dance, moving his fingers as if he were jerking the strings to little puppets prancing across the floor. “You had your questions and doubts, sure. No thinking man doesn’t. But you still did everything I said. You even…’ Chuck looked down at Dean. “Fell in love with him.” 

Castiel’s eyes welled up as he looked at Chuck. His lips pressed together, and he lowered his countenance to the floor. 

“You meant for me to fall for him?” Castiel asked and again, his voice cracked. Chuck took a deep breath and let it out as he nodded. 

“In more ways than one. You fell from grace for him. You lost everything for him. Sam may as well not even have been in the picture. It was for specifically him. And then… you fell in love with him.” Chuck pressed his fingers to his lips before he corrected himself. “That’s a common word trap. You didn’t fall ‘in love with’ him. That implies that he loves you back.” 

Castiel let out a sob.

“You love him. He…’ Chuck looked down at the supine Dean Winchester laying across the bed. “Does not love you. The distinction is in the details.”

“Why?” Castiel asked thickly as he raised a wet face to Chuck. 

“Well, he likes women too much. His business gets in the way- terribly avant-garde with his emotions. He is too unstable for any sort of relationship-“Chuck answered but he misunderstood the question.

“No… Why? Why did you do this to me? To them? Why did you make me love him if that is what you did?” Castiel asked as he lowered himself to the floor near Dean’s feet. Chuck smiled. 

“The story needed romance. Some fun rolling in the bed with the sexy waitress is all well and good. And I felt I wasn’t getting anywhere with Lisa. She wasn’t strong enough to be a hunter, nor near smart enough for it. You… not only were you strong and beautiful, but you were just the right sort of arch that would just make the droves of fans chops water. An Angel of the Lord who has fallen for the surly hunter. But the love is one-sided. Unrequited. It has a nice ring to it.” 

“She almost died! She and Ben!” Castiel snapped through his tears. Chuck nodded.

“Yeah, but she didn’t. And she has been safe and unharmed since. If she stayed with Dean, she would have died. And Ben would have ended up like the Novak girl.”  
“Claire! Her name is Claire!” Castiel said angrily as he wiped his face. He slowly got to his feet. “And you killed Jack.”

“Oh yeah, well, that I had to do because Dean wouldn’t do it. I thought he would be the one to pull the trigger. Sam… couldn’t do it if you threatened him with total obliteration. He’d rather die. It seems I was mistaken about Dean too…” Chuck shook his head as if he didn’t understand. And perhaps he didn’t. “I don’t understand what it is about these Winchesters. Like, what makes them that way? Why they are so different than any other human. It gets infuriating how unexpectedly resilient they are, you know?” 

“You made them that way! And there are more like them out there! And you made the Angels the way they are too. Everything is the way it is because you made it so. You must have made them, Dean and Sam… to be able to outsmart you. And you made Jack as a threat to you. That is why you had to kill him! You were afraid of him!” Castiel said through his teeth. This may have insulted others, but Chuck merely shrugged and held up his hand. He placed his finger to his thumb. He had every intention of just destroying Castiel right there for his cheek, let the Winchesters wake up and find what is left of him all over the walls. But Chuck hesitated as he looked in Castiel’s eyes. So haunted and hurt.

“I am a writer, child. Everyone, since Adam and Eve woke in the Garden, has been written by me. You don’t think I knew what Lucifer would do? You don’t think I knew beforehand that he would convince Abner and Gadreel to let him into the Garden and talk Eve into eating the Forbidden Fruit?” Chuck asked as he reached forward and wiped the tears off the left side of Castiel’s face. “You don’t think I knew what would unfold if Adam and Eve sinned? I wanted them to break free of the Garden-‘ 

“But you punished Gadreel and Abner for that folly!” Castiel said even more furiously, “They spent thousands of years in torment for something you wanted to happen?!” 

Chuck nodded. And when he saw how irate Castiel was becoming he shook his head as if he found Castiel absurd. “Look, there isn’t much of a story if just Adam and Eve are running around in the Garden! And I have had to make the good guys and the bad! Do you think I wanted to make Lucifer the bad guy? I loved him! I still do! Do you think I wanted to wipe everything out with a Great Flood? Count this planet lucky. Other planets I simply just left. This one, I kept trying. I didn’t want to give up on this one. I felt so much for this little spit of rock. I still do!” 

“I notice how all the bad guys are all the people you care about the most,’ Castiel started and Chuck cut him off.

“Except now I’m the ‘bad guy’, right? And believe me, this is not what I wanted. But We have done everything else. I am the end of the line. And now everyone who does read the books is going to view me as a villain and I just never seen myself as the villain type. Though to some of the more cubistic of them, it will just verify what they already suspected of me.” Chuck said as he turned away from Castiel and walked toward the coffee maker, flipped it open and emptied the filter with a flick of his finger and instantly the pot started brewing more. 

“And not all the bad guys were because I made them so. Do you think I wanted Adolf Hitler to do the things he did? Jim Jones? And oh, so many others? Those guys were off their rockers! I had nothing to do with them.” Chuck visibly shivered as he put an elbow casually on the counter and rested his chin in his palm as he watched the coffee pot start to brew. 

“I told you… or rather, Dean, that I had to leave. I couldn’t keep holding your hands. You had to learn to walk on your own or you would always need daddy’s hand. Humanity needed to fall on its face! Numerous times if that is what it took. And over time, they have surprised me. I thought this world would be no different in the end, then the other worlds I made. But…’ Chuck stood up and smiled toothily. “They have surprised me. Things are still messed up, sure. But they are learning from their mistakes. Slowly. But they are learning. And that is all I can ask for.” 

“Then why do you want to destroy it?” Castiel asked.

“That… is what villains do, right? They want to destroy or subjugate the world. I am playing my part. The Winchesters, being the heroes of Supernatural, are here to stop my dastardly plans.’ Chuck said and gave a truly awful theatrical villain laugh that left Castiel looking more confused than anything else. Chuck realized that it came off as silly and he shrugged and turned back to the coffee. 

“See? I can’t be a good bad guy. Compared to Lucifer… Amara… The Leviathan… I am just… blah. But given who I am… Yeah, I am the end of the line. Oh, perhaps that can be a chapter title… I like it, what do you think?” He looked back at Castiel. 

“You are doing this because… your story needs a… villain?” Castiel asked incredulously. Chuck nodded.

“I can’t make you the bad guy again. It’s been done before a couple of times.” Chuck stood up and started rummaging through the cabinet over the coffee maker and pulled out a huge mug. Castiel read the words “A Giant Cup of Stop Your Fucking Bitching” in bold white letters across a black background. “And the fans like you too much. Besides, I like you too much to do that again. You have enough problems on your plate, don’t you?” Chuck pointed at Dean. 

“What is your next move, Chuck?” Castiel asked. He more demanded as Chuck faced the coffee and started tapping his finger on the fake wood countertop and jouncing his knee as if he was dancing silently to a tune in his head. “Why are you here?” 

Chuck decided enough coffee had brewed and he pulled the carafe out and poured the hot liquid into the cup as he started whistling to whatever song it was, he was listening to in his head. “Now why would I tell you that? It would be playing fair. And I am not playing anymore.” 

“You came here because of the disappearance of Vanessa Welch! There is no other reason for you being here! What was she to you?” Castiel asked again, more forcefully. Chuck took a sip and chuckled as he cleared his throat. 

“Let me see if I can get this right…’ He had to think of it again before he adopted a stereotypical voice of an anti-hero archetype in most stories. “You simpletons will never understand! I have searched for this marker for years! I will never let you have her! I will find her before you do-gooders do! The world will be MINE!” And then Chuck gave another truly cheesy post monologue laugh that would have fit in with a B-rate horror movie from the ’60s that Dean was rather fond of. At the tail end of the laugh, Chuck actually coughed and laughed at how stupid it sounded. 

“This is funny to you?” Castiel asked as he stepped forward. Chuck back up a little and held up a hand in front of him. One finger extended. 

“Not funny ha-ha… just funny weird.’ Chuck put the cup down and walked over to the door before changing his mind and turning to the counter, taking the cup and going back to the door. “I will make this simple for you. Either you, Frick and Frack stop looking for Vanessa and any other markers that vanish, or I… will destroy you!” He actually lifted his arm the way Bela Lugosi would do as Dracula, to hide his lower face and stalked out of the open door in a crouch. 

Just beyond the door, Castiel can just hear Chuck whisper something like “I am never going to live that decision down” before it was replaced by the sound of blowing wind. Castiel stood there for a moment in silence, the wind blowing the outer door, so it hit the side of the building. Suddenly Sam and Dean started to stir on the bed and floor, sitting up as if they had been clubbed over the head. 

Amongst their moans, as they came to a sitting position, they heard other moans that carried on the wind. An unearthly sound that caused all three men in the room to stay still and listen. It grew steadily louder and louder. Suddenly there was a cracking sound. It sounded as if something smacked against the glass with great force. Castiel ran forward and grabbed the door and pulled it open. The light of the room flooded into the breezeway and all they saw was dark, slightly sandy tarmac and the tree line on the other side before a body, limp, fell from overhead proceeded by the final crash and give of splintering glass that tinkled around the body of a middle-aged man as he hit the single step in front of the door. 

Sam and Dean jumped up and gasped. Castiel ran forward to see if the man was okay, but by the way, he fell to the ground, it was highly unlikely. He got to the outer door and was looking at the partially dressed man with blood running out of his nose and ears, his eyes cataract before his attention was grabbed by a movement to the right in the floodlight. There were a few people coming around the corner of the building. There was another form in the dark window, smacking old withered hands against the glass with mindless determination. In front of him, from the tree line, a few other people, younger, thinner, looking as if they were either starved or addicted to drugs, tripped and ripped their way through the trees indifferent to the rips opening up in their clothes and skin.

Castiel backed up a step but as he did, his back hit Dean’s chest. 

“What the hell happened?” Dean asked as he watched the people stumbling toward them. It looked like a poorly rigged zombie apocalypse as more people were coming out from the left side of the building where it was dark. Some of the bodies that came out from the tree line were starting to crawl over their car in an effort to get to them. 

“We need to get the hell out of here! We can’t be trapped in here!” Sam said loudly as he took aim and shot the first zombie closest to them. Castiel thrust forward with his angel blade, burying it into the skull of the next one. 

“Chuck! He did this!” Castiel said as he pushed the nearest two away and again thrust his blade into another, a thin elderly woman who fell to the ground like a cut marionette. As Castiel swung and took down numerous zombies, Sam and Dean cut their way through the wave coming in behind them from the other side of the building.

“There are too many! We got to leave!” Sam screamed as he managed to get to the door and about fifteen more of the undead were coming around the corner from the dark side of the building. Dean got to the driver’s side and started to get in as Castiel climbed into the back of the car. For some reason, the zombies had stopped moving as soon as they got to Baby. And for that moment, Dean hesitated, looking at the people closest, in the light of the doorway. 

They stood there for a moment just facing at him. Hissing and breathing. Unseeing. Mechanical. It almost appeared that they were waiting. 

“Dean, get in the car!” Sam said forcefully as he too watched the peculiar way the zombies just halted in their attack. Dean heard him, yet he could not move. They were slow and lumbering. The classic zombie. Stupid and easy to outrun. On the air a great melody of howls and wails of the undead. Did this mean that all of them were zombies? Dean ducked and sat in his seat, and as soon as his ass hit the leather, the group of zombies in front of him started screaming… and… running. They are fucking running at him with their withered hands outstretched! 

They were on Baby’s bonnet within a blink of an eye and Dean was slamming the door shut and throwing her into reverse, not caring that there were people behind him. He ran them over, bodies, one after another thumping and thudding off the rear end of the car as the ones from the front crashed their faces off the windshield, heedless of the pain they may have felt if they were human.   
Crazily, Dean spun baby into a turn that threw the zombies off the bonnet and to the street. They rolled away. But before Dean was even able to throw the car in drive, the ones that had rolled off the bonnet were already on their feet, running… no, sprinting at them! Speckles of blood evident even in the dark of the night.

“Oh shit! Dean! Drive! Drive!” Sam yelled as he was forced to aim his gun through the windshield in the event that the zombies overpowered them. Dean through Baby into drive and slammed both feet on the accelerator. She peeled tires against asphalt frantically for a moment before she shot forward, mowing down everything and anything in her path, carrying her passengers to safety. 

Dean tried hard not to see any of the faces. There seemed to be no end to them as he ran down street after street, passing store after store and all he saw was the walking dead!   
Coming to an intersection, Dean spun Baby to the left, heading back in the direction they had entered into Skowhegan. Two-lane blacktop that would bring them back to Waterville and the interstate. He did not let his foot off the accelerator for a good long while, choosing to risk a crash than to be eaten by hoards of zombies. 

Baby ticked and whined. One of her headlights was out. A radical reconstruction of her bonnet left dents and scratches and fuck knew what sorts of fluids over the once pristine black hood. The windshield was only just barely hanging together as Dean kept trying to look at the fading town lights of Skowhegan behind them in the distance. 

“Are you hurt?” Dean asked Sam. Sam, looked a little shaken but shook his head. Dean looked in the rearview to see Castiel was looking out the back window. But he did not inquire Castiel as to his physical integrity. 

“Are you okay, Cas?” Sam asked breathlessly. It took Castiel a second to answer. When he did, he simply nodded and looked down at his knees, turning away from the now town of the living dead.   
“Yes. But all those people… Chuck just… destroyed that town. And for what?” Castiel asked sadly as he turned his eyes back toward the town that he could no longer see over the dark horizon. 

“I don’t know, man… you were the one awake with him! He made us take a fucking siesta! What did you chat about?” Dean asked angrily. He too was thinking of all those people. People who were in bed, expecting to get up in the morning, grumpily go get a coffee and head to work, complain about bills, kids going to school, hiding bad grades from their parents. Store clerks dealing with the usual daily grind of idiotic shoppers, cops bagging their quota of stupid drivers… none of that was going to happen tomorrow morning in Skowhegan Maine. 

“He…’ Castiel thought of how Chuck had told him that Dean did not feel the same way Castiel felt for him. Castiel is sure this was not something that Dean would be happy to hear, whether it was untrue or not. “He said he was looking for Vanessa Welch. He… called her a marker. I am not sure what that means.” 

“And simply because of that, he turned everyone into a fucking zombie?” Dean yelled. Castiel nodded. 

“That’s bullshit!” Dean quipped. Sam looked at his brother with disquiet. 

“Dean, he killed Jack, simply because he said he was ‘dangerous’. He set off the ‘end of the world’ simply because he was angry at us!” Sam said defensively. Not for himself but for Castiel.

“No, it's clear he thinks I am lying,” Castiel said severely. He felt guilty after. He wasn’t even entirely sure where his anger was coming from. Was it the things Chuck said? Or was seeing proof of it right before his eyes? 

“Wouldn’t be the first time!” Dean said indelicately. “Would it?”

“Enough, Dean! We have bigger problems!” Sam cut across him with a sharp gesture of his hand. 

“Whatever gets me off that problem!” Dean thrust a thumb in Castiel’s direction. Castiel’s mouth opened for a second as if he wanted to retort but he sealed his lips shut and then reached over to the door and tried to open it, despite the fact that he knew it would not. The Winchesters had rigged the doors in the back to not open from the inside because sometimes they were forced to hold monsters back here.

“Let me out!” Castiel said quickly. 

“No, Cas! Don’t leave! We need you!” Sam said hurriedly as he turned in his seat to watch the angel yank on the door handle. Then start kicking it.

“Pull over and let me out! I will go back to the bunker on my own!” Castiel demanded.

“Don’t be stupid! There is a town of fucking walking rabid corpses back there! You ain’t ganking them all by yourself!” Dean said over the sound of Castiel’s foot hitting the locking mechanism. 

“And that is another thing! I am tired of you calling me stupid! I am tired of you seeing everything I have ever done to help you as anything but supportive! You constantly see everything I do as a bad thing as it reflects poorly on you! I am tired of trying so hard for you, Dean, just to have you spit in my face! Now,’ Castiel lifted his hand up to the door. “Either you pull over… or I will blow the door off its hinges! I can jump out of a moving car and it won’t kill me! But that will leave you with more hours than you will care to give toward fixing your precious car!” 

“Don’t you fucking dare!” Dean yelled over his shoulder. 

“You have until the count of three to pull over and let me out!” Castiel warned as a soft white light started to burn in the center of his palm and eyes. 

“Cas, come on! Don’t do this! We can work this out!” Sam insisted gently, even though he knew things were broken too far for that. “We can’t do this without you!” But he had to try. 

“One!” Castiel said, not hearing Sam. He wanted Dean to be the one to break, to give in. 

“If you blow that door off, I swear I will-‘Dean halted in the idle threat. Exactly what would he do to Castiel that he already hadn’t? Or what would he do to him, for real? Dean could not think of ever really physically hurting the angel. 

“Two!” Castiel said, the glow larger, emanating a force that Dean and Sam could feel on the nape of their necks. 

“Jesus, Dean! Just pull over and let him out!” Sam relented when he realized that Castiel wasn’t bluffing. 

In the second that Dean was fighting with himself over whether to pull over or try to make Castiel stay, he dallied too long and his drivers side rear door shot across the passing tarmac with a shower of sparks that made it look like a Catherine Wheel as it flew backward and bounced across the road half a mile behind them. 

As his door faded into the dark behind them, Dean slammed on the breaks and came to a screeching halt, throwing himself, Sam and Castiel forward in their seats. But before either Winchester could recover, Castiel was out the door, standing on the outside of the car, leaning over to look at Dean through the window.

“Unfortunately, hanging around with you and your brother has given me the ability to be a thief. I will walk along the road and lift a car. I will go back to the bunker on my own! I will do my best not to embarrass you and do anything stupid,’ he made quotations around the word, “before I get there!” 

Castiel stood up and walked across the street as casually as if he had just asked for a ride to a store to buy a newspaper. His hands now deep in his pockets. He stopped after a few steps and turned to point back down the road. “Oh, your door is about a half a mile down that way! It would behoove you to go retrieve it. And next time, it is only common courtesy to let a passenger out if they ask!” 

With that, Castiel turned and started walking down the street, fading into the dark between lamps. He did not appear under the next lamp down the street. Dean and Sam sat there for a moment in stunned silence as they looked down the road in the direction that Castiel headed. 

“What the hell crawled up his ass?” Dean asked. Sam actually punched his brother. A sharp snap of his wrist that made Dean’s head rock to the side. Dean’s hand came over to cover the swelling on his cheek as he looked angrily at Sam. “What the hell?!” 

“What crawled up his ass? YOU, DEAN! YOU! What the hell are you doing to him?! We’re all on edge! And you decided to just… attack him!” Sam yelled. 

“I’m - me? I’m attacking him? I am not allowed to give my damned opinion?” Dean asked as he roughly grabbed the key in the ignition and twisted it with a little more force than he meant too, and Baby’s starter screeched loudly. Dean let up his heavy hand and much softer, turned it so She started without protest. 

“No, that wasn’t giving your opinion! You were fucking stabbing him with it! Over and over! Dean, I have said it before, and I will say it again! He is one of the good guys! He is on our side! You have to stop taking out your anger on him!” Sam said as he slapped the dashboard to make his point. 

Dean kept his mouth clamped shut. He turned and looked over his shoulder and began backing up down the road to look for signs of his damned door. The truth is Sam was right and he just didn’t know how to stop. The loss of his mother and… Jack, is just weighing so heavy on his heart at the moment that any flurry, no matter who it was directed at, no matter who rose to the bait, took the head off of this collision course he was on. He didn’t want to hurt Castiel. He didn’t want to fight with him. 

It did unspeakable things to him every time Castiel looked in his eyes. Dean wanted, very deep inside, to just turn the car into drive and speed down the road and look for Castiel and beg him to get back into the car and then they would find the damned door and go back to the bunker together. But something stopped him. Something in him that he hated. It was just so much easier to blame Castiel for everything. Because he was always involved in one way or another. 

“And you know what? You know I am fucking right!” Sam said angrily.

“Alright, Sam. We are done talking about it.” Dean said tiredly. Honestly, he was done talking about it. All he was seeing now was Castiel vanishing into the dark between lamps and there is a horrible squirm in his belly that he wasn’t going to see him again. He saw indentations in the tarmac where random corners of his blown off door had collided with it. He grimaced at the amount of damage he was going to have to fix to even get the door to hang on its hinge again. Never mind closing the damned thing. 

“No, we are not!’ Sam snapped. “You know what I think? I think you really care about Castiel… that you have already forgiven him for what happened to mom! But you cannot and do not know HOW to tell him! You would rather be like dad! Hold it all in! Channel your anger at Castiel! Because you know Castiel won’t fight back!” 

Dean made a fancy show of looking at the lack of a back door. “He won’t fight back, huh? And excuse me… but I remember him handing me my balls once because I was going to give myself to Michael! He won’t fight back? My ass he won’t fight back!” 

Sam looked forward and was biting his lips as if trying to fight back more. He looked on the verge several times of letting loose another tirade, but the swell subsided into sullen silence. It took them a few more minutes to find the car door jammed in the fence of a farmhouse on the left side of the road. And an additional ten minutes of trying to pull it out and having a hell of a time trying to explain to the shotgun-wielding Mainer why they are in his yard trying to pull their car door out of his fence. 

Eventually, paying him off with a couple of hundred dollars to not pull the trigger or call the cops left Dean and Sam trying to awkwardly shove the door into the back seat. So by the time they got back into the car, they were far grumpier than before and questioning if they were outside the town limits of Skowhegan, that is why there was a live person there that was kicking enough to give them a hell of time about their situation. 

For both of them, the return drive to the bunker was largely quiet but for a couple, requests to stop at a motel for some rest or something like that. And no Castiel. Not once the sight of him. And despite both Dean and Sam trying to call his cell phone, the angel was ever elusive. 

By the time they had actually gotten back to the bunker, later the next night, Sam and Dean had gotten a word from Mitchel, who lived in the outskirts of Augusta Maine, that the entirety of Skowhegan Maine was quarantined. The Military had to go in and count the number of the dead. Who had indiscriminately got up in the middle of the night and died in the streets for no apparent reason. The CDC was called in to test the waters and the soils. So far, the death toll has reached over five thousand. Not one person was found alive so far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this is a bit of a long one. 
> 
> I will be on a little hiatus because of surgery and I have been sick and in and out of the hospital.   
> By now this is the only thing that is distracting me with how my health has been. 
> 
> So please stick with me. I will continue. 
> 
> Love you guys! Supernatural forever!


End file.
